My father's tools

My father's tools

Builder’s square of steel and rivet

Arc weld, solder, file and fettle

Angle finder, bronze on pivot

Father’s hands of finer metal

Chisel, bandsaw, axe and mallet

Bone on wire and flesh on steel

He wore your scars and jabs and cuts

Your friction burns by grinding wheel

Copper, zinc and brass and steel

Can be reborn with wax and oil

Skin and blood were made for dust

Made for powder, wind and soil

Rust in pieces, oxy torch

Gas that hissed from blue to white

You were blade and flame and fire

You were blister, heat and light

Dust and rust, your funeral pyre

You are darkness, you are night

Rest in pieces, axe and knife

Blow away to Elwood sand

Find again, your owner’s wife

She lies dissolved.

We laid her there Ash to sand and grit to sand

Ash to salt, where bay meets land

You were tempered, you were cast

By flame and forge and coal and hone

A Chevy needs some heavy tools

A Chev won’t run on gas alone

A proper car, my father said

Frame of iron, Yankee steel

Giants both, and one would last

Bones would crack and skin would peel

Metal parts can be recast

Leather bits can be made fast

With wire, cable, mesh and glue

A proper car, my father said

A proper car and that came true

I wish the one who shuffles now

Who creaks and cracks, who gets around

In either gear, ‘cos Chevs have two

Was you

Tom Manning – June 2021