Day 27, Workshop

Workshop.

His marmalade jars of curtain runners

Jostle screws, nails, boxes of come in handy,

Shelves stocked, labelled within a hands reach

Of putting together, of making do.

Piles of blades of saws accompany the rafters

Waiting for the time they’re made new.

The vice he pestered me for years ago

Rusts against the future’s closed back door,

Where planks lean, crowd towards the meagre light

Inhaling the smell of oil mixed with rot,

Waiting, too, waiting to be transformed:

But the workshop’s falling down.

It’s not my place, this, I hear him laugh;

I’m helpless, a foreigner, all out of words.