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
Tom Manning lives in Melbourne with a dog called Max and a lorikeet called Max who calls out 'Go Blues' most days.