Ode to an Old Car

How do I write a tribute to a car without being sappy?
Probably, I can't. But you were, after all, my first, and that must count for something. Also, the way you carried my soul around--that counts for something too: the hours and hours several times a semester gliding from Tennessee to Illinois and back again, and those last bittersweet voyages to Arkansas to say goodbye to a woman with a thousand wrinkle lines and the man who loved her, and the sweetly strange moment on the way back when it seemed God showed me what to do with all the love I had just seen. I glimpsed pink sunrises and red sunsets and mile after mile clocked while the heart recalibrated from one scene to another. I talked to God and I thought while your great metal capsule shuttled me through landscapes beyond the merely physical.

I brushed the caked snow off your rear windshield when I said goodbye, so that I could rub the raised outline of the duck head sticker pasted there by an elderly man I respected and loved--your first owner, the man who agreed with his family to give you to mine. I liked that sticker--liked the fact that my car didn't scream "vulnerable single woman" in this city world. I liked the way a Buick '92 was actually cool here. The tow guy was disappointed when he saw you. There wasn't much to salvage, so we renegotiated your price. But that's all right. You were worth a lot--just not that kind of currency.

Thanks.