An Old Man’s Steam Engine Sits on my Windowsill

Made from old pipes and screws

steel springs fused still jagged 

metal melted to make a furnace 

fitted by his fingers which once taught 

me to write rough hand 

cut and crafted 

He’d sell them for twenty a piece 

old cut offs throw-aways welded 

and worked into something special  

He built them while hunched over hot 

rods rendered 

straight as spokes I begged 

for the last one little fingers flicking 

a cobwebbed engine   discarded 

inside a greenhouse he’d been hesitant 

thought I was just joking 

He held me in raptures 

drawn in by every detail 

questions hammered 

over and over 

like the pin that makes the piston 

Holding that engine felt like I was cradling his world 

boiled down to scraps 

I’d sit and stare

my little fingers feeling the rough ridges 

bouncing across bumps 

of the engine back picking at the peeling     paint