Handy Man

by Carol Taylor

He combs the junkyard till he finds a rear
right fender for a ' 69 Corvair.
"It isn't any older than the left,"
he reasons. "Dings are normal wear and tear."

The lid's unhinged. The washer drum won't spin.
"I've got a wedge or two out in the bin
I think will fit it. There, that ought to hold
until some kid ham-fists the thing again."

He never throws a good used part away,
this deacon of the worn-out One-Hoss Shay.
"Why should one part be stronger than the rest?
The other parts might give out any day."

He jerry-rigs the porch rail and the lock,
the fan, the fence, a bike, a cuckoo clock.
There isn't anything he can't put back
just like it was the day before it broke.

Carol Taylor lives in the Houston area, where she works for an international company, does free lance translating, and sings with the Texas Master Chorale. Her poetry has appeared in Iambs & Trochees, Light Quarterly, Byline Magazine, Artemis, The Barefoot Muse, and other journals, and in Alsop Review Press's Anthology One. One of her poems was recently set to music by Texas composer Randol Bass. She has put out two chapbooks, Saving for the Future, 2003, and Houston Skyline, 2006.