Manual
by Boyd Bauman

You don’t want that model
said the salesman,
manual transmission,
manual windows,
manual door locks,

yet automatic
was this old farm boy’s reaction,
and we gladly paid less
to add on our own elbow grease,
practice the fading art of the stick shift,

for I learned to drive not from a manual,
rather from a by-guess-or-by-gosh instructor,
who parked the John Deere on a slope
so with a roll and pop of the clutch
it would roar to life,
who positioned the eight-year-old
on the duct-taped seat
of the big red grain truck
when needed on the north forty
in harvest time, put it in second gear,
exhorted him to not let it die on the hill,

who showed how one should lift a hand
callused by joy of manual labor
from the wheel of the pickup
to bid a fellow driver go first
at the intersection,
wave him in when he’s merging,

most of all in simple salutation
to an oncoming traveler
until awareness becomes standard
that it’s a shared journey,
a lesson to take to heart–
there’s no manual for that.



 

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