Tinkering

Robert Graham 1946 (Glasgow)

May 23

Free verse

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.

About this poem

Writing turns difficult memories into perhaps useful truths. Or a different kind of truth.

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Written on January 25, 2024

Submitted by robertg.73901 on May 10, 2023

: 51 sec read
: 64 Views

Quick analysis:

Scheme	XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX
Closest metre	Iambic hexameter
Characters	923
Words	170
Stanzas	3
Stanza Lengths	6, 6, 6

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Robert Graham

Retired high school English teacher. more…

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Jewoo525
An expression of nostalgia, and a humble tone, mixed in with the descriptions of intimate spaces makes the three-stanza structure hit really hard. The poet doesn't have to proclaim nor describe a single thing about how they feel about their father leaving for you to know EXACTLY how it impacted them. Really compelling. more »
LikeReply10 months ago
- robertg.73901
  Thank you jewoo525. Of course, one always thinks one is leaving a little trail of seeds to perhaps provide the narrator’s take on why this disintegration occurred, the motivation etc; So the word ‘chassis’ bears a lot of associative/symbolic freight, as it hints at the sexual history/tension in the parents’s lives and the attractions of its on-top solution. But then you never know, do you, whether anyone nibbles at the seeds, to speak. For me, that’s the challenge to infuse the poem with ideas and ambiguities and not take the easier sentimental way out. But I digress…… I truly appreciate your sensitive comments. Robert more »
  LikeReply 110 months ago

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"Tinkering" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/161377/tinkering>.

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