The Last Drop

where every person's car is a chariot of freedom
and individual pride flowed from the shear joy
of tooling down the road in glorious solitude
even if it was to the grocery store two blocks away.

But while donor a kidney
becomes the fear over today's gas prices,
in my sunny paradise there was time in the 70's
when we had to face gas rationing,
which meant you could only fill up on certain days,
this caused long lines at gas stations with tempers raging from the stress.

On more than one occasion did I have to get up at dawn
to drive over to the local station and sit in a line of fifty cars leading down the street,
hoping they didn't run out of gas before I got filled up.

Most of the time, we all bore it with coffee and donuts
a few forced smiles and doing our best not to scream from the insanity.

But instance stuck in my mind most of all,
one rare time of pure gas elation
because a moment of pure inspiration deserved applause.

It happened when we were in line and the man in front of me was next,
only some jerk zoomed in from the street
apparently on fumes since he ran out of gas and had to push his car
up to the vacated pump.

Well the man in front of me remained calm,
merely strolled up to the clown's car
suddenly removing a locked gas cap from his pocket.
slapping it on the offender's car
getting a standing ovation from all of us who got out and stood to celebrate
before he got back to his car and drove off.

Perhaps it wasn't the perfect solution,
yet at that moment it was pure poetry
of a way to turn the strain of petroleum crisis
into a second of pure, fumes in euphoria.