When I’m unable to get the lid off
a jar of dill pickles, Dad hands me
the same bent butter knife he used
earlier to pry open his key ring.

A toolbox tray in his utility room
has a few rusted nails, some wire,
two hacksaw blades, an ink pen,
several sockets and a toothbrush.

There’s a pair of vise grip pliers,
three flat tips and a cross point in
his kitchen drawer I’d seen while
searching for a roll of scotch tape.

Dad has tools in the barn, car trunk
and well house he can never find,
that someone else must have used
and didn’t put back where it belonged.

I arrive to borrow a hammer from my
brother’s organized garage filled with
tools for every job to find him scraping
mud from his shoe with a butter knife.


This poem first appeared in Blast Furnace (December 2013).
Used here with the author’s permission.