7/29/2019 Galvanic Action, or, October

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IN MEMORIAM another failed project

I met Alans guru today, guide and mentor - a small man

Looking at the boat from under a flat-cap, muffled against the cold

He quoted Beowulf over tea, in Anglo-Saxon, swore

In Latin and spoke

With the voice of Angels

Of grammar-school, Luftwaffe and technical education

Eighty-years old, Alan will not

Smoke in front of him - he is

Like a father conferring his judgement,

Of the scattered tools, dusty, greasy - the butt-littered floor

Great holes are being cut in Raven, along the weather lineWhere the galvanic action

Of rainwater and Poplars brine have corroded deep pits

Into her sides - four millimetres in six-mil steel

I sit in the caravan, a patch of October sunshine

And ache - four days to remove the fit out to show

The black-painted steel, the narrow ribs, the raised hardboard flooring

- I, a nine stone weakling floored, by day four.