Read the poem ‘Rocinante,’ by Nell Smith

This week’s poem, Nell Smith’s “Rocinante,” takes as title the name of Don Quixote’s worn-out horse, and is about a father’s barely functional but beloved old jalopy of a truck. I love the vivid detail of this vehicle’s liabilities and its dramatic “lurching” and “grinding” when the speaker, as a kid, was recruited to help rescue it back up the hill. I also love the beautiful gravitational pull of the poem’s final lines, in which everyone has made it home safe. Born and raised in Midcoast Maine, Smith’s poetry and prose have appeared in Electric Literature, Southern Humanities Review, Sugar House Review, The Offing, Flyway, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in creative writing and environment and natural resources from the University of Wyoming and lives in the Southwest.  Rocinante By the time my brother and I showed up, the truck had already been there for half our father’s life. In the summer, he strapped our canoe in the baby-blue bed and strapped my brother and me up front with a single belt around our waists leaves blowing around our feet as air whistled up through the rust holes in the bottom. The truck was a point of contention between him and our mother, who never let him drive us farther than the lake, but he remained loyal to the truck. I didn’t think too much about the rust or the single belt or the cold hard sheen of the dashboard. The truck had crank-down windows after all— my current worry that year— meaning no electric system to fail us and trap us underwater. No, what bothered me was how my father would get the truck stuck at the base of the hill in the back pasture and come stomping up the slope calling our names. Our job was to jump in the bed, adding pounds to the thinned brush and branches, while the tires spun in a skid of curses, turning the grass and clover to mud. Hours later, I would still be able to feel the ache in my knuckles from grasping the sides, crouching low, bracing my light body for the jounces as the engine bolted and the gears chomped, sliding and lurching until there was a grinding leap and the truck dragged itself up and out. At the top, our father lifted us from the back and set us on the ground, reeling, telling us thank you, we were just the weight he needed. _– Nell Smith_ * * * Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Rocinante,” ©2014 by Nell Smith, appears by permission of the author. Copy the Story Link Tagged: [Deep Water](https://www.pressherald.com/tag/deep-water/)