Nails
I shake the tartan tin awake,
Struggle with its lid, rust-sealed, tight.
Arising from the nest of nails,
You take me by the heart,
Remind me with half a smile:
Luck's never found looking up.
A boy, eyes glowing still
From last night's thunderstorm,
You prospect the village,
Thinking as your pockets fill:
They're also from grandfather-God,
Like silver rain, lightning bolts.
Some go back fifty years
To Fitzroy's blue-stone lanes;
Others, extracted with joy
From hardwood boards and beams,
You tapped lightly on a brick —
A chiropractor of crooked spines.
Sitting on a home-made bench,
Tin on knees, you're looking for
A tack to close my gaping sole,
A brad for Mum's curtain rod,
A grey clout to keep evening light
Slipping our corrugated fence.
It's a decade since you died,
But they remain, a legacy of sorts,
Set by your galvanising touch.
I see you in the shape of my hand
Rummaging for the nail
That crucifies father to son.
Horse-shoe
1
Winter, no sign of dawn, you're walking to work.
The milkman's draught-horse is snorting steam.
You find it on the street, surprised by its warmth.
That night Mum suggests we leave it at the gate,
Together with the empty bottles filling our bones.
You prevail, saying fortune has her favourites.
On Sunday we point to the back gate, brick wall,
The trunk of the apricot tree, but you nail it secure
To the toilet door, open end up, for kismet's sake.
Leaving McKean Street, we pack it with the tools.
But village customs have no place in a newer home:
It's forgotten in the basement smelling of earth.
2
For years it was a mere dead-weight on my desk,
Restraining unpublished poems from following me
In the rush to my infant daughter crying for milk.
One day, thinking of you, I understood a truth
Silvered by retreating roads, shot with nails of light:
Spurs prod flesh forward by pointing to the past.
And there I am, at the window, scared of the night,
Watching the bearded rider entering the village square,
Circling the fountain, sowing the cobbles with stars.
The dead forgive the living thundering to the post.
Curved for motion it quickens my plodding heart,
And I'm racing toward you, redeeming your luck.
Builder's string
Hold tight, you shout, and pluck a note —
A call to prove my worth and growing strength.
Its end tied to my forefinger,
I resist your manly pull, the cutting pain.
The edge of the garden-wall defined,
You wind it deftly on a stick in figure eights,
Like Mum spinning her wool —
I rub the pink impression from my skin.
And it's remained like that ever since:
Sleeping through an Imperial Age,
Dreaming of guiding stones, aligning bricks,
Stilling gravity with a bit of lead.
Taking