The poem 'Cherrylog Road' by James L. Dickey is a narrative poem involving a memory recounted by the first person who secretly awaits and meets his teenage lover in a junkyard, in a place identified as Cherrylog Road. The speaker jumps from car to car in the yard as he waits for his beloved teenage lover Doris Holbrook to show up secretly as her father did not approve of their relationship. The poem narrates a youthful passion secretly fulfilled in a car junkyard, with the main theme being secret love and sexuality that blossom.
The title of the poem identifies Cherrylog Road, the location of a junkyard where the narrator eagerly awaits his teenage lover. The poem pays more attention to the setting as Cherrylog Road is identified in the first and last stanzas, where the narrator arrives for an earlier arranged meeting with his lover. Doris lives nearby but has to secretly meet the narrator as she fears her father might find out. He moves from one car to the other and imagines himself in a race car driving, imagination which soon turns to his lover, fearing the consequences that would follow if her father found out. The two lovers meet and make love passionately before the narrator departs in his bike while Doris has to return home with used car parts to explain her absence.
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The poem describes a youthful passion, which it depicts by the usage of the junkyard to evoke the anticipation and recklessness of the narrator as he waits for Doris. In the line "For I knew that Doris Holbrook would escape from her father at noon," the poem sends a message to the reader that Doris' father does not know or approve of the affair.
