Each morning on the docks I'd rise <br />At dawn 'round six-fifteen <br />Throw on some clothes and splash my face <br />And brush my teeth real clean <br />With aching bones <br />I'd bend and stretch <br />My muscles stiff and sore <br />From nailing planks and pounding seams <br />I'd caulked the day before <br /> <br />The bicycle was rusty <br />Locked inside the parking lot <br />And as I rode to work I'd think <br />Of tools I had forgot <br />A putty knife for scraping <br />Sharpened chisel or the plane? <br />But weariness prevented me <br />From turning round again <br /> <br />The auger, level, or the saw <br />In tool bag they would be <br />Unless I'd loaned them to a friend <br />In which case I would see <br />Him in the yard that morning <br />Waiting for me by the store <br />Where we would get some coffee <br />Just like me all stiff and sore <br /> <br />With cream and sugar in our cups <br />We'd plan the day ahead <br />Mull things over, chew the fat <br />Until our brains went dead <br />'Did you bring two part epoxy? ' <br />'There's a leak around the skeg'. <br />But he was tired and in reply <br />He said 'I thought you did' <br /> <br />Then we would cross the boat yard <br />Just like many times before <br />With the smell of all the hardwoods <br />From the sawdust on the floor <br />And once it struck our nostrils <br />We began to come alive <br />There was one that smelled like chocolate <br />One like honey from the hive <br /> <br />She was over in a corner <br />Standing up on twenty jacks <br />Her hull was made of douglas fir <br />Her keel was painted black <br />Her insides were mahogany <br />Her decks were grayish blue <br />And it had been our task at hand <br />To making her brand new <br /> <br />It'd taken twenty months or so <br />Perhaps a little more <br />But at this point we didn't care <br />And who was keeping score? <br />And on the day we launched her <br />With a bottle of pink Dom <br />We asked the God's to keep her safe <br />While we kept working on <br /> <br /> <br />Written by Sara Fielder © 2011<br /><br />Sara Fielder<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-shipwrights/
