How to Renovate a Morris Minor

That’s him, in the camouflage green overalls,
hiding under the car all day from my mother.
What is he but a pair of feet, my father,

wearing oil drips, enough zips for all
his secrets? That’s him, poking with a spanner
up at a nut, as if unscrewing heaven;

grease-fingerprints make a crime scene of the kitchen.
He gives the stars in his bucket to the bonnet,
the windows, his foot on the accelerator

makes the world go and, when the day is over,
that’s him, that’s him – he’s snoring on the sofa,
Practical Classics open on his lap –

his eyes dart under their lids as he sleeps,
like all the cars he’s racing in his dreams.

from My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014), © Jonathan Edwards 2014, used by permission of the author.

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