Motor Lodge by John Drury

Motor Lodge

            by John Drury

“So this is it, experience,” I thought,

lugging tin buckets from the ice machines

to rooms of real adults with cigarettes,

mixed drinks in plastic cups, and proffered coins.

I reached out for their blessings, but the tips

were nothing next to rumpled, unmade beds

at four in the afternoon, women in slips

and men in t-shirts while the TV played.

Down in the laundry room, I counted sheets,

stunned by the musk that vanished in the wash,

and balled up soggy towels that down the chutes

exploded in bins. Before the evening rush,

avid and timid for what I glimpsed at work,

I left, hanging my gold vest on a hook.

 This poem is from John Drury's collection, The Disappearing Town, (Miami University Press, 2000). And before I go on, I want to send a shout out to another of Drury's books, The Poetry Dictionary (Story Press Books, 1995). I tell everyone who writes poetry that this is a book to get. The first entry is Abtract Language and the last, fittingly, is Word. In between are definitions, explanations, and examples of things every poet should know, including Catalexis, Ghazal, Haibun, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Rondel, Synecdoche, and Voice. Since it was published in 1992, it is missing things that have come about since then, such as Golden Shovel poems. So it is not the ONLY reference poets should have, but it is a very good one. The entries are well-written and clear and the examples are wonderful, including poems by all sorts of (mostly) 20th century poets.

But let's move on to this slice of youth--a first job. In this case, a motel gofer, a kid for all issues.

This is a sonnet with slant rhymes as the end rhymes, with just one true rhyme (tips and slips). I love slant rhymes, but the ones in this poem are particularly wonderful--they are surprising and playful, and--at least in the first two stanzas--barely there. This sonnet is a Shakespearean/English sonnet form.

I love how this poem begins, that "I am an adult doing adult things and learning adult lessons"

bit that the speaker immediately pulls us into. Is he trying to concince himself? Does he really believe this? I am going with "yes" to both questions, depending on the point in his shift.

Those real adults he finds himself surrounded by are so wonderfully visualized here: smoking, drinking, watching TV in their underwear in the afternoon. It is obvious these adults are much different than the adults the speaker is used to. And isn't one of the benefits of a job when you're a teen is being around different people, seeing that the world is not made up of folks just like the ones at home and in your neighborhood?

The third stanza is a vague nod to what those real adults have been up to, as our speaker gets to wash the motel rooms' bedding. "Stunned by the musk" is such a perfect way of saying "reeking of sex." "The soggy towels" that explode is also quite clever.

But before the place gets really busy, it is time for the speaker to go home. "Avid and timid" is how the poet describes his reaction to what he sees ion the job, and those mixed emotions really sum up our adolescent feelings about experiencing "real" adulthood. But for now, at least, the speaker can escape that transition. He hangs up his work vest and stays young and innocent, and he returns home to adults who are presumably NOT heading off to motels

in the afternoons.

This is such a sweet poem. But it is not sappy or overly sentimental, things that in lesser hands this experience could have become. For one thing, the sonnet form reins the length and how much can be said. But it is much more than that. The sweetness/nostalgia/long-

ing for youthful innocence is suggested here, not stated outright, and the poet has given us images without telling us what to think and feel. The poem ends when the speaker's shift does--there's no wrap-up, no "how I wish I were young again." Summarizing is something great poets avoid, or at least revise out of their work.

None of us can go back in time, but we can visit past times in great poems like this one!