Viscosity

My father was good at engines;
up to his elbows in the guts
wrenching life out of hunks of iron
I must have seemed thin as paper
to his oil-grained hands, a fragile armful
of awkward parts

If I'd been born slick with multigrade instead of blood
I might have flooded the chambers of his heart
jump-started a spark of love
in the hot wiring of his brain

He tried; smudging my cheeks
with axle grease -for ever after the smell of love-
explaining the crucial mix of fuel and air
-as mystifying as Pi- the gentle art of choking
Poisoned puddles transposed my paintings
into wobbly rainbows that made me cry
The one thing we both understood was
that oil and water will not mix

Some lessons are learned subliminally, become innate
as if we are born knowing
knuckles scrape, fingers bleed
old tears turn to rust, and as metal cools
it ticks like a listing heart