Running on Rust
The joints are getting creaky and the engine’s running rough,
the years of steady grinding have been doing enough
to take the edge off everything that used to have an edge–
now the man runs on rust and momentum and a ledge
that keeps him just above the floor where stopped things go to stop,
not climbing and not falling, just existing at the top
of barely, just above the bottom, keeping the lights on–
running on rust from the first light till the last light’s gone.
The morning takes longer than it used to take to navigate–
the mirror shows the inventory that the years accumulate,
the geography of getting through and getting by and getting on–
a man who’s running on rust at the arrival of the dawn.
The coffee does its chemical best to animate the machine,
gets the operational minimum to something like a scene
of a man who’s approximately present and approximately there–
running on rust in the morning on the coffee and the stare.
The work requires a kind of forward motion he provides,
the body goes through all the required and the obliged,
the conversation and the meeting and the task and the report–
running on rust is running, and the running is a sort
of living, technically, with all the boxes being checked.
She asked him how he’s doing and he gave the standard read–
“fine, good, all right, getting by”–the vocabulary of need
reduced to its shorthand, quick and disposable,
the language of a man whose depths are no longer accessible.
The rust has its own aesthetic, its own textured grace–
a man who runs on rust has got the lines upon his face
of something that has been and has continued past the being–
the rust is not decay, it’s the evidence of seeing.
He doesn’t want the new engine’s clean and brand-new running,
doesn’t want the young man’s lubrication
of a mechanism that hasn’t met the road in any serious way–
the rust is the record, and the record is the day.
Running on rust is its own kind of reliable, its own guarantee–
the rust keeps him in motion and the motion keeps him free.