04-13-2020, 12:47 AM
Epiphany
A two man job the foreman said
I was with Danny bow legs and his
Clarence dock walk.
"You apprentices are all the same
rushing to go nowhere", he grunted.
We knelt in the rain
on open steel grating,
belting hell out of a damper
with a four pound lump hammer.
I think maybe it was his initials,
stamped on the wooden handle,
but in that moment
the curtain went back
and my whole life was
mapped to his past and future.
In thirty years I would be Danny
knees shot, bitter and twisted,
angry with what I had got.
Telling new kids to slow down
in fear of them bettering me.
The realisation was as bleak
as the November evening,
I wanted to start again but
dad said Learn a trade son,
someone will always give you work.
But he hadn't seen Danny
and I had other plans.
A two man job the foreman said
I was with Danny bow legs and his
Clarence dock walk.
"You apprentices are all the same
rushing to go nowhere", he grunted.
We knelt in the rain
on open steel grating,
belting hell out of a damper
with a four pound lump hammer.
I think maybe it was his initials,
stamped on the wooden handle,
but in that moment
the curtain went back
and my whole life was
mapped to his past and future.
In thirty years I would be Danny
knees shot, bitter and twisted,
angry with what I had got.
Telling new kids to slow down
in fear of them bettering me.
The realisation was as bleak
as the November evening,
I wanted to start again but
dad said Learn a trade son,
someone will always give you work.
But he hadn't seen Danny
and I had other plans.
If your undies fer you've been smoking through em, don't peg em out