Tool Steel Healer
The maintenance foreman
cared for every machine in the steel mill
with his hands
and his canvas bag of tools.
He climbed steel ladders on the sides of those machines to crawl
atop the machines and put his arms
around their heads taking apart
elbow connections and old plates and gaskets and bearings
like a surgeon
in white smeared-with-black-machine-grease overalls,
a man
from Texas who could let himself care
for machines that were so hard
and dirty and tough,
so full
of sharp edges
and murderous power
and he put his hands on those machines with a kind of love
he could only show with a monkey wrench
and a set of screwdrivers and a sledgehammer,
he healed
those machines with the sweat off his back and his fingers
as strong as steel
and smiled
when they once again pounded and roared and pulsed with oil
and power that could break a man’s arm like a twig,
smiled
because he could care so much for things
and still
be as tough as nails.
Page(s) 27-29
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