Saturn

With all that may imply

The bright-ringed planet

Spinning within rings

Unique, remote, faintly golden

Number six in the solar line up

Number six, a so-called perfect number

My ruler, as some say/said, my birth planet

In a time of many parties

A chitchat party point

For those indulgent of astrology

The dourness, the quiet spark, the driven wit

Desirousness, all somehow tied to it

All joshed about when this car first came home:

Its magic colour — "purple pearl"

Its boast and shame — "the woman's car"

The special notion that these autos saturnine

Would not be tainted by the oily sheen

Of venal car sale trickery

No bargaining at Saturn lots

No gamesmanship, no scammy deals

Sold more like clothing

Fine new frock, say

Or hardbound book hot off the press

Or true-blue flat of blueberries, perhaps

Grown by a local man

In honest soil, unpraised, unsprayed

Unfazed by terms like 'ladies choice'

Or 'safely sensible' — oft-spoke slams

Re shocking lack of car machismo

My husband went and got himself the Saturn

(Despite my opposition, fret about cash spent

When money was so very tight)

Purchased it with strong-willed glee

A new car celebrant of his new life

New work, new home, a new book coming soon

A Saturnalian gesture, in its way

To do this, to do this now, full speed ahead

A Lord of Misrule wildly giving and receiving gifts

High levels of domestic revelry

Wine and lust and joy on tap, free flowing

Open doors of endless welcome

For all those easy laughing guests

Who seemed like him

Unfrightened by blank future or dark past

The Saturn, parked without, on guard

A pretty pearly emblem of celebrant time

Called it always the Saturn, no lesser sobriquets

Cared for it so carefully

Praised it so often, in all its many Saturn modes

Thereby contrived, somehow, to daily flatter me as well

***

Part 2 of "Saturnalia" follows.