04/13/2022

Endless Trails

When I was just a very young lad after my final day at school 
my very first job was for a man who said I will teach you something cool 
I will teach all the arts of how to build and lay a few bricks 
and in return you work for me learning all the construction tricks 
that was seventy years ago and to his workplace I did show 
learned the trade and worked hard and knowing what I needed to know 
and watched as other did other trades different that laying brick 
learning as I watched them saw and hammer and all of their other tricks 
absorbing all that knowledge knowing that the time would come 
wanting to be skilled in many things so I could complete the sum 
with all that knowledge I had learned and good at leading men 
as the years rolled by, I changed my work no longer one of them 
instead, the leader of the crew who told them what they needed to know 
and they went about their tasks confident with what they could show 
as the years rolled by I changed again and this time in an office went 
at a University to apply my skills as one of the Management 
for twenty-two years I worked there happy in my destiny 
thinking back to that time when that first man came to me 
and said you are a bright young lad why not come and learn a trade 
which started off my life and it has never been the same 
I have been retired for twenty-four years and now live in my RV 
travelling when I want, and other times am stationary 
but one of the things that I still have and will never lose 
is how to work with my hands and my love of tools 
which are all boxed up and travel with me taking space and adding weight  
and most of which will never get used but for old times’ sake 
I keep them with me to remind me of the boy I used to be 
starting out at my first job now just a memory 
but one I keep along with the tools to remind me of my life 
when I was just a little kid before my worldly strife 
seventy years have passed, and I have grown so old 
when that man said come work for me my future he had told 
and though my days of using tools have all but now long gone 
I have them all with me still so my memories carry on. 
 
Written 04/13/2022. Read my other poems at https://pondblog2011.com