My Father’s Bike Shed: A Hobby Passes

Overgrown branches on the corrugated roof;

they’re old men, grunting and cramping in a gust.

Distant barking at the sun’s final heave.

Colour wrung from the sky.

Bike frames hang like drying pelts,

a medley of tarnished chrome.

A jacket of dust, ‘round lidless jars

and air sombre with grease.

Lone gloves lie with the scroggin of screws:

stale washers, sour nuts,

nameless scraps, brittle and decayed.

Not a nod of a wheel or a click of a chain:

a theme park that ran out of funding.

Knife making seems to be the rage now

as metal fillets wait in the breath of a lamp.

Abbey Clark