Old Codger

I’ve got your war medals framed and this battered plane you made first day apprenticed, 1912.

Your other tools were thieved, but not this lump of ‘four-be-four’, dark with your elbow-grease.

In the bast on your handlebars it had you wide-kneed, whistling gutters for fifty years, hating it.

At seven your mum was dead, a teacher and church organist, you had her slender hands, they said.

So soon as you could fend her clout At twelve your step-ma had you at work At sixteen, you got to hell out

to Flanders. At last I grasp your pride that my hands are white and soft upon this page.