Darren

I know a guy called Darren who welds
Steel to steel, in a coursing arc of superheated gas
Mingling atoms in a spark storm
And making strength happen.

He knows the stuff of metal, where the fissures form
And all the dirty secrets,
And guards it from its premature downfall,
Willing it to survive.
He takes a calculated risk about a dozen times an hour;
Last month he was in A and E, his inner forearm ground up
In a flesh-shred of black iron and hot meat.
He lived. He smiles sadly as he tells me, arching eyebrows saying
‘Don’t do this, son, don’t be me. You don’t want that’.

He welded up the floor of the truck,
A killing field of krypto-rust, playing a concerto
Of teeth sucking and tongue clicking, born
Not of laziness, but of perfectionism;
‘Trouble is, you end up chasing holes’.
And yet each heart sinking new-found canker is excised,
And new steel cut and melded, and the
Rotted, tarnished factory precision of the pressed plate flimsy steel
Is overlaid by Darren’s strong through-bonded rough cuts
And made unique.

He works fast, and grinds a plate of one point five mil steel
Like cutting out a coupon from the Sundays.
The shower of fractured fire that spews from the grinder,
The retina-destroying electro-flare of the MIG,
These are his paper, and his scissors, and his stone.

Darren plays on fruit machines and can’t hold down a job.
They let him use the plant because they owe him two months pay,
And the rewards of playing with fire are insubstantial, these days.
‘These welds’ll outlast the rest of the car’
He says, and he believes and knows it,
Broadcasting verity from tired, fired eyes.
He drinks the tea I made and gifts me
A nearly finished tub of Tetraseal.
We part with oily shaking hands and banknotes,
And I can see his bending form in my rear-view
Closing up the shop and promising himself a pint
And I am left in bitter awe and shouting in my brain
he’s such a talented guy, one of the best, I mean,
he could teach this shit
But all he does is join A to B, and sleep, and play;
He makes repairs, and lives another day.