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No easy task this
Cleanup of basement workbench
Full of multifarious clutter,
Dusty mementos of hand-me-downs
The real chore is in tossing the
Handmade tools my father
Crafted as a machinist under
The final shadows of WW II
And the scraped-up pale-blue tackle box
Full of Lazy Ikes, Bombers, Jitterbugs,
River Runt Spooks, and
Hula Poppers.
A simple matter on the surface
But what’s not seen is
The slippery thought of
Letting go of steel craft and memories,
Lovingly bequeathed as if
They were brothers whose being
I’m now releasing like unwanted
Fish, letting them drop from my hands
To the trash bin below, letting them go
While I suppress a traitor’s smile,
Great Judas at the workbench, son
Who is not much more than an ingrate
Who will probably keep only the tackle box
In the end.
This poem first appeared in Fox Cry Review, 2009.
Used here with the author’s permission.
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Stephen Anderson is a Milwaukee, Wisconsin poet and translator whose award-winning work has appeared in numerous print and online journals and has been featured on the Milwaukee NPR affiliate, WUWM Lake Effect Program. Stephen is the author of three chapbooks and three full length collections, and several of his poems formed the text for a song cycle in The Privileged Secrets of the Arch, a chamber music composition performed by members of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and an opera singer. A fourth poetry collection, On the Third Planet from the Sun: New and Selected Poems, is forthcoming in the summer of 2024 (Kelsay Books). Stephen’s work is being archived in the Stephen Anderson Collection in the Raynor Libraries at Marquette University.
  
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