Tinkering

My old man loved tools, loved tinkering. Wrenches, drills,
screwdrivers, pliers. Black oily hands, greasy rags.
On his back under a chassis or ailing motorbike,
bits & pieces littering the garage, making things fit,
firing them up, fine tuning the timing, the gears,
those good-as-new machines, a metal puzzle-solver.

My mother didn’t tinker. Laundry, dishes, floors,
pots & pans, hands red raw, knees red dimples,
knotted kerchief on her head, apron tightly tied.
An aging Cinderella sweeping up dust,
her motto, ‘where there is spic there is span,’
clean, tidy, squared away, a smoother of sheets.

When my old man left us, we inherited a raided,
abandoned space. Gone the glistening, well-oiled tools,
the as-new car, the thrifty banknotes from
a can under the sink. His mind had never been idle.
All that tinkering, never once looked at a blueprint,
fitting it together in his head, on his back, under a chassis.