1.   Grease and Rust

Every tool is the anointed king of its work:

even as it waits and fades into the general mess,

even if it sinks to the status of a handle

poking from a box behind the curtain

beneath the counter, a wire coiled

round the grip, its head near drowned

in a pool of screws… A coat of oil

repels corruption while the handle waits.

The vise is seasoned black with grease.

Black grease is cleanest in the shop

where rust is the enemy; clean means

strongholds of metal free of rust.

Everything blessed with oil, like the hair

of heroes and saints, prophets and messiahs.

Grease fills the surface-scratch that’ll never heal,

settles deep into the score against all agents of rust.

Each tool is patient and confident it is meant

for the job it was designed to do best; it will wait

if it is used for only a moment in a rock’s life

or for a thousand years in the tribal life, it will wait.

The workman has observed this waiting,

this slouched hanging from the board,

like the one square hanging in the ready

with a level to get it all straight

the way the other levels laid aside wait

with bubbles of air, like held breaths that can tell

when all is aligned and gravity agrees

that the work is plumb with the heart of the world.

Some say the patience of the workman

is the virtue of his shop, but, truly, the virtue

is motion. Rest is not how things get done.

Rest is how rust creeps into the world.

2.   A Workshop Run by Rust

Erosion is the mark of love

carved in chalky cliffs

and left to the wind to press

like an unrelenting kiss

that bruises and smothers

and smudges the names

from the hearts that were penknifed in stone,

stone having offered no heart of its own.

The workshop of rust works breathlessly

without compunction for the organic

shapings that work miracles from its slag,

and by their own devices make dirt

turn on rust and work

toward their own exhaustion

to keep the water at bay,

or make the breakwater dash

the crashing of the waves.

Rust shows no mercy;

it takes rust centuries

to bat an eye.

When the workman’s reflection

catches on a chrome bend,

he senses an oblique adversary,

backwards working the shop to grist

for the other workshop where a pinch

sprinkled on the seasonal wheel

will run the natural migration of steel

and give a grape charge to ionise rust.

Then rust becomes food, turns flesh; angelic

engineer of all endings; keeper of the red gate;

whatever the finale’s sound, says rust,

                              the end begins with a squeak.

3.   The Apron

A clean apron is a sign of illness.

Like a fresh-bristled broom,

a sharp pencil, an instrument

kept in tune, a stainfree apron

is suspect and should not be allowed

to leave the room unabused.

The workman’s prized apron hangs alone

on a spike in a vertical beam

next to a clutch of aprons

that serve the craft

with varied cloths

for different moods of labour.

The favoured apron

is of leather enwrought

with cracked, caked, baked-on grime,

and eighty years of elbow grease.

It retains a paunchy curve or two

from one old man, who worked well enough

to keep it clean and pliable and non-flammable,

an armour against oil squirts and acid spills.

It rebuffed the meteoric showers tindered

by the friction of the circular saw

grinding through sheets of flashing; remained unaware

and undaunted by the glare of an occasional

slow comet of light shooting through the dim air.

The apron hasn’t time enough to speculate

the hazards posed by the random arc

of a brief, minuscule spark.

The carbide teeth shrieked through wood,

the whirr and thump of the jackhammer drill

flicked shivers and sharp slivers at the chest.

The apron deflected them all with a tisk,

a sizzle, a kiss of smoke.

The apron carries scars enough

to keep a tribe of ears in wonder stories,

enough indeed for an odyssey:

at least one whole chapter devoted

to how the slumbering blowtorch roared

and spun to give the seasoned apron

that black-eyed burn and why.

Another chapter on the oblong patch

that covers the spot that fizzled away

when acid spilled its clawing biting frenzy

of bubbles over glove and apron,

invisible but for the foam at the mouth,

like some rabid spirit let loose in the shop,

what serendipitous sign spilled out that day,

and what it hissed.

Chapter upon chapter of soiling,

burn, and battle-scar

spanning generations of shop

in a sea of work in progress

for the home above the workshop,

the home the workshop serves,

maintains, and adorns with labour

and a labourer’s rusty cicatrices,

            and a labourer’s oily stains.