Meccano Me

In the dankness of the cellar
where the dust isn’t rude but there to be expected,
I uncovered a chest of short trousered memories,
of the pastimes I once eagerly pursued.
A clockwork train set that Beecham
would have axed because the track went in a circle;
never went there but always came back.
A Meccano set, thrown into a scrapyard box
of wheels, nuts and bolts, and incomplete machines.
Crashed Dinky cars that had flown from walls
or mangled into each other like stock car jousters,
a penknife, deflated leather football,
ripping yarns from torn Boys Own Annuals.

That night on the kitchen table,
with tiny spanners in my large fingers,
I stripped out the clockwork motor from the train
and used the Meccano to build a framework
for its new housing, bent the red metal sheets
around to make it whole. Then with a rusty penknife,
that I had honed on the stone step by the back door,
(like I had done all those years before),
I performed open heart surgery. Transplanted
my broken heart with this new clockwork replica,
oiled rusty cogs with tears and sealed the joins
of this Heath-Robinson contraption
with congealed blood. I closed up my chest,
stitched with the lace from the football,
leaving just a tiny keyhole. I keep the key
around my neck like a 00 gauge crucifix.

At night,
now I no longer hear the gentle midnight sleepings
of your soft breathing, I listen to the whirring
sound of my blood going round,
proud of my abilities to make do and mend.

©2007 P.A.Levy