-- this little filling station,
Elizabeth Bishop's poem begins; that image followed by this:
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over all
black translucency.
Certainly, the filling station where I sat this morning, though dirty, is not "oil-permeated" so much as "dust-bunnied" (like every other place in Sewanee).
Fortunately, the owner -- and his wife and daughter (who used to work with him) -- decorated with personal tchotchkes that provide distraction: wooden filling station birdhouse hanging in a front window, a "My dad's garage" sign hanging beyond the counter, a wicker pig holding customers' free gas entries, and, encased with some car accessories, a collectible copper tow-truck.
It appears that Bishop's concluding line, "Somebody loves us all," applies.
