Poetry Monday: Fixers

Fixers

On back roads you can find people
who keep machinery alive.  With a file,
a wrench, a hammer, they scrape, twist
and pound until the old tractor wakes up
or the plough bites again into the ground.

I've bullied rusted iron and made it
remember what to do, and once on a back road
I put out a fire under the hood of a car;
but these greasy geniuses have to conjure
miracles day after day just to keep going.

Often their audience is a customer eager to
get started again, or maybe their little daughter
watching how Daddy fixes things.  And sometimes
only an old dog--wise in the ways of when to jump aside--
studies mechanics and barks when The Master says,

"There!"

William Stafford

The photos are of Mike K.'s tractor, which had been his father's.  Top picture is the "before" (which I took) and the bottom is after some repairs but mostly a custom paint job.  I wasn't there for that unveiling. The man on the left is the guy who did it, with Mike in the middle, and his friend who helped him haul the tractor to and from this road in a very small farming community in central PA.  Click on the photos to see them properly.