04/13/2022

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