Cheers Max come on have another go!!P
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 24 December 2013 19:35
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: 'Metalwork'
Metalwork
That tall-necked crane speaks to me -
I'm craning my neck, squinting
into its metalwork and the past.
Old crane, newly re-erected
at Station Pier's empty corner,
reminder of the historic port
(where countless migrants landed
from wrecked, hungry Europe)
takes me back, not to my easy
migrations, but safe postwar
Wellington boyhood,
with Meccano sets 2 and 3,
their handbook colour-spreads
on cranes and locos I might
assemble if I laid out the parts,
flexible metal strips and plates,
green and red with signs of rust,
angle girders, panels, flanges! -
tighten finicky nuts and bolts,
fix the moving parts and wheels -
look Dad, my crane! - If!
Always something went wrong,
or parts were misplaced, or
the whole thing overbalanced.
'Trial and error, son,' said Dad,
wisely clasping behind his back
his itching fingers. 'Patience
makes an engineer.' I'd walk
away, visit the rail-yards with
their filthy machinery,
envying the men in charge,
return and argue with Dad
the case for sets 4 and 5.
Six months between birthday
and Christmas, pocket money
hopeless, chain-smoking Dad
never in family-spending mood;
my engineering phase faded.
Mr Parks who taught us metalwork
saw me flinch at soldering, brazing,
welding. My failed crane wound up
elevated to a dark cupboard.
Max in Melbourne, early morning 25th December 2013
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