Distance

Gold cherry

By Parson Thru

Tue, 17 Jul 2018
  • 8053 reads
26 comments
 

It’s an hour after class

I’m sitting in the living shade
a fountain playing to my right
Voices echo from the patio tiles
energised by mid-day sun

Heaney’s “New Selected Poems"
lies on the table by my glasses case
His words lie heavy on my mood

Boyhood workshops infiltrate my thoughts
The smell of metal
Kiss of edge on surface, keening steel 
like butter skimmed to spread on toast

I long to stand inside those 'shops, long gone
where men and boys applied the skills they’d culled
passed like stories from one generation to the next

I sense the distance
Like the pack-horse men who watched engines 
hauling loads unimagined clear through the hill

If those factories stood today
would I wish myself back 
among machine tools and the taste of steel?

Leaf patterns dance upon the page
Languages blend in the shade

Those painted walls seemed as permanent 
as our trade secure

Certificate U
Poem
Miscellaneous

Comments

Submitted by Philip Sidney on

Such an evocative poem.

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Thanks Philip Sydney. Thanks cherry picker.

Parson Thru

Submitted by Ewan on

looking back, sometimes. Old pals who took apprenticeships at 16 haven't lifted a tool in 30 years.  Policemen some of them, or RAC men. The lucky few might do some shop-fitting though they're time-served carpenters and joiners. One lathe-turner stayed after a rugby tour to Apfeldoorn and sells cars to rich Dutch businessmen. I was no horny-handed son of the soil, I had an office job, then a post office job, doubtless these kinds of jobs will be roboticised soon. In the supermarket in Traben-Trarbach today I was looking for the bakery counter. It was a machine, press the buttons, wait for the bread to come out. 25 choices... an old lady walked away from it shaking her head.

I loved this poem. One of your best. Do you need the last line?

Author Page at the 'Zon
 

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Why, do you want it? :))

Only kidding!

I know. To a large extent, it's a bit like the transition from pack horse to canal to railway. I stole that idea from a wonderful man called Donald Beale, who you can Google or YouTube. I was talking (in Spanish!!) to a Madrid EMT bus driver at the weekend. He's about to retire. I think he said there are about 7000 bus drivers on the EMT network alone. Then all the taxi drivers, delivery drivers. That's just driving. There's another, less geeky, side to Tomorrow's World. Maybe I'm just a little nostalgic and maudlin. Check out the studio tape of The Beatles "Help!" to cheer you up. Won't help with the nostalgia though. I'd better go. Beer o'clock!

Parson Thru

Submitted by Ewan on

have one for me.

Author Page at the 'Zon
 

Submitted by london_calling79 on

Fantastic. So heavy. So Heaney! The sound and the touch of everything here is razor sharp and they all come together to the transcendent ending. I'm with Ewan on the last line. If he doesn't want it can I have it?

 

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Thanks london_calling. I'm a bit of a sponge.

It's gone!

Parson Thru

Submitted by Di_Hard on

I like "living shade" and "keening steel".

And the link between skills and stories. Story teller used to be a very respectable trade

we are always wrong, were, are, will be, because we are intelligent enough to know we make mistakes, but not enough to stop :0)

 

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Keep that sense of humour going, Di_Hard. Thanks for the lovely comment. There are still some around working professionally.

Parson Thru

Submitted by bosch on

2nd stanza cut "nostalgia/a dangerous and treacherous companion"

4th stanza, maybe combine lines 1 & 2 to read "Boyhood workshops, the smell of metal"

lead lines of stanzas 5.6. and 7 something to look at

minor other quibbles, but fluid, and literate, as usual

agree with Ewan, cut that last line.  

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Thanks bosch. Little by little.

Parson Thru

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

Put that last line on ebay - it sounds like you might start a bidding war!  

Another wonderful travelogue, but this time to the past - thank you parson

 

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Thanks insert. I'm thinking along the lines of a "Spot The Ball" themed competition where writers post a piece with a line deliberately removed and readers place an "x" at the line's location. £5,000 cash prize or an Austin Allegro plus speedboat.

Parson Thru

Submitted by airyfairy on

I came late to this so I don't know if the last line in question is the existing last line or a previous last line?  Just checking, before I place my bid.  

Submitted by Parson Thru on

"How wrong we were"

Looks like it might not be mine to sell. Illustrious names such as astronomer Patrick Moore already have their dabs on it!

Always the same, airyfairy. Nothing new under the sun!

Parson Thru

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

Evocative - Phil Sid is right.

I remember - I have to, I'm a tedious person who has done loads of short-term jobs - doing the time-sheets for Metal Box on the Alperton Industrial estate when I was 16. A summer job, agency work from Brook Street Bureau. The machines had names Jig Mill, Jig Bore aka Moore and Agie Newell. Who was Agie? She was a spark erosion machine. The guy working her wore gogs and I just about remember a tub of fluid, a metal wand and green(?) sparks.

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Ha! Fantastic, Elsie. I don't think ours had names other than the makers' names, most of which I've forgotten. Dean, Smith & Grace springs to mind. The machine tool companies were huge and venerable. I remember we had the light shop and the heavy shop (I worked in heavy - very masculine), sheet metal shop, blacksmith's etc.

Parson Thru

Submitted by Di_Hard on

"we had the light shop and the heavy shop" How do you sell light? Or heavy, come to that? Or was it the shop itself? Imagining a floating shop and another shop with very strong gravity :0)

 

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Stick around long enough, Di_Hard.

Parson Thru

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Light workshop = small precision engineering.
Heavy workshop = big hulking lumps of metal that you needed a crane to move around.

Parson Thru

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

Metal Box may have been 'light shop'. It was a small factory which employed about 20 machinists, all men. I walked from my desk in the main office through the workshop to hand the timesheets to my supervisor. I have no idea where the finished work went.

Submitted by Parson Thru on

The poor wage office clerks had to run the gauntlet of an avenue of soft porn in our place. Madre mía!

Parson Thru

Submitted by Philip Sidney on

Our wonderful facebook and twitter pick of the day - do share :)

Submitted by celticman on

the work was hard, loud and often noxious. Because of our youth we don't know that. Because of our age, we forget that. 

 

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Bang on celt.

Don't go down t' pit, son.

Where's my lad gonna work?

Tragedy of the working class.

Parson Thru

Submitted by Parson Thru on

Thank you for the gold cherries!!!!

Parson Thru