Mechanic Poem by J. Barrett Wolf

Changing universal joints.
Replacement the hips live in a slow sea of grease.
The floor is insulated from my steel-toed boots
by a cushion of grime and 30-weight oil
leaked from a free-form sculpture of disembodied engines
growing like an iron-based cash crop along the concrete wall.

This is no assembly line of shiny repair,
No immaculate construction happens here.
Closer to back alley decrepitude…
The emergency room of savaged mechanism.
Offhand, it looks like malice,
Smells like a million long, un-airconditioned miles
baja-level raggedy badness
Dripping gallons of oil, antifreeze and sweat.

Entropy and it's ever hurtling desire to squeaking over the horizon
At sixty miles per hour.

These cars bear the portent of a coming extinction;
Premonitions writ by rust on steel
held off by spot welds, epoxy, duct tape, coat-hangers,
silicone, stove bolts and fiberglass.
Door-frames that once thumped shut
with the authority of German engineering
A spray of reddish oxide dust,
A scraping whine of wire wheels turning…

Parts made in three countries, then two,
a single factory,
traded in aging water-stained cartons at swap meets,
or cobbled together from sheet-metal and spit.

Then, miraculous, back on the road
It'll look just like new, but we won't tell you how.

The slick, almost glowing ratchet wrench,
chromed as a bumper hitch
turns and clicks in my hand.
Larry's carbide wheel screams a Haley’s comet of sparks,
Infinitely hot light reflects off Gene's black welding mask.

Grime is the spare part in every repair.
A secret formula known to all cars:
one part leaked black engine oil
the liquid history of dinosaurs,
one part road dust, tossed-up dirt and pebbles
knead for mile upon thousand miles
into sound-deadening caulk that lives
behind every broken strut and ball joint,
beneath enameled fenders and polished trim.

Thus, we peel and scrape
paint and undercoat,
weld, torque, tension and thread;
and back they come having done their alchemy,
undercarriage turned to a Jackson Pollack of corrosion,
A surrealist painting of once disciplined metal.
Or there, beneath the hood
A vital wire come loose
Or some small - but oh, so indispensable part
expired.

The finite life in each exquisite piece of the machine
That whispers to us softly…
There’s a junkyard of mown grass and marble
Waiting for this tired chassis
The very day our mortal coil
Shorts out.