12-08-2015, 12:40 PM
Entering Entelechy
It was 2:00 am on wet Wednesday
I had just picked up a job card
and had reach precipitator 6B
apparently a damper
needed to be set free.
A two man job the foreman said
I was with Danny bow legs and his
Clarence dock walk.
You apprentices are all the same
rushing to go nowhere, he used to say.
As we knelt in the rain
on open steel grating,
belting hell out of the handle
with a four pound lump hammer
that had his initials stamped on it,
the night fell silent, clouds parted
my whole life lit up in moonlight
and mapped itself to that moment.
In thirty years I would be Danny
knees shot, nasty and twisted,
angry with what I had got.
Telling new kids to slow down
in fear of them bettering me.
The realisation was as cold
as the steel handrail I was holding,
I wanted to turn and run away.
Learn a trade son
someone will always give you work,
so I stayed.
But not for too long.
It was 2:00 am on wet Wednesday
I had just picked up a job card
and had reach precipitator 6B
apparently a damper
needed to be set free.
A two man job the foreman said
I was with Danny bow legs and his
Clarence dock walk.
You apprentices are all the same
rushing to go nowhere, he used to say.
As we knelt in the rain
on open steel grating,
belting hell out of the handle
with a four pound lump hammer
that had his initials stamped on it,
the night fell silent, clouds parted
my whole life lit up in moonlight
and mapped itself to that moment.
In thirty years I would be Danny
knees shot, nasty and twisted,
angry with what I had got.
Telling new kids to slow down
in fear of them bettering me.
The realisation was as cold
as the steel handrail I was holding,
I wanted to turn and run away.
Learn a trade son
someone will always give you work,
so I stayed.
But not for too long.
If your undies fer you've been smoking through em, don't peg em out