Poetry Precis #9: "Wheels"

Jim Daniels’ poem, “Wheels,” rouses a nostalgic tone with his use of repetition and symbols to convey the despair that comes along with the memories of a lost one. The symbol of the different cars throughout the poem symbolizes the passing of time and the rites of passage that one goes through during a lifetime.  For example, “In his Mercury Montego getting married,” or, “In his black LTD trying to sell real estate,” showing different aspects of his life as he grows older. The poem is written from the view of photographs, or a camera, which symbolize memories and the way one remembers a loved one, bringing up that nostalgic feeling of looking back at the past. The repetition of the word “waving” after almost every sentence emphasizes the way that the speaker views these memories; always remembering the loved one in a state of happiness, frozen in time forever. The speaker’s despair comes in the last stanza, where the speaker is mourning that this final memory ends abruptly, because there was “no camera to save him,” meaning that there is no photograph or tangible memory to capture his final moments of life, and nothing to “save” him by freezing him in time for his family to remember him by.