Legacy
by Stephen
Anderson
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, a son
Not
much more than an ingrate
Who
will probably keep only the tackle box
In
the end.
~ originally
appeared in Fox Cry Review
