Asbestos hands that unscrewed sparking plugs
Many thanks to Marc Stevens for ‘Apport’ – a poem inspired by his father’s shed. Marc has been penning poetry since 1984 and is clearly very passionate about the art. Marc is ‘ inspired by the fiction of Ian M. Banks and by the Liverpool poets, especially the love poetry of Brian Patten.’ We really appreciate his contribution and support.
Apport
If you asked me where the dead live
I would say nowhere –
unless you count memory.
If pushed, I would tell you that there is no
quantum theory of ghosts, that the soul,
as a self-sustaining energy matrix,
is hokum.
–
In the shed that was my father’s
I’m hoping for rawlplugs
because even armchair physicists
have to put up shelves.
–
I peer into jars of assorted screws,
into packs of tacks and tins of pins
that prick the questing finger
and prod the sheepish conscience to views
of how much I took my father’s help
and how little I returned.
–
Screwdrivers look down their shafts
in dismissal of a man who has no calluses.
Sarcastic spanners and tinsnips
snipe from the sidelines
like old sweats on building sites,
hazing the new boy.
–
Above the bench, the adjustable wrench,
the bradawl, the backsaw, the brace
are polished smooth by years of toil,
as bent by the task as the man
whose hands have stained them.
–
In drawers, old toys of bolt and grommet,
experiments in copper pipe,
are rusting down to a humus
of sawdust, solder, the spirals of swarf
he’d pluck from fingers as thick as truncheons
without complaint,
on mornings too cold for participation
by teenage theoreticians.
–
Asbestos hands that unscrewed sparking plugs
heedless of HT leads, unbothered by the manifold
that burnt a hole in his good overalls,
seemed to perform diagnostics
that would baffle the man himself
and I’d be back on the road again.
–
Odd, amongst such riches,
that loss should touch me now.
Odder still that those damn rawlplugs
have dropped into my palm,
like a gift, just for the wishing of it.
Marc Stevens
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