Lenny's Workshop

I promised way back in my first post I’d take some picture of the workshops I ran across on my family vacation. This one meant a lot to me. It’s the remains of my uncle’s workshop. I walked in it once, about five to ten years after he passed…nothing had changed. And the poem says it all – I knew the shop like I knew the back of my hand. I wasn’t a woodworker yet, nor did I pay much attention to my father’s teachings, but by god. I knew that shop, where to find everything, like my uncle was there showing me where to turn. Anyways, wrote this up for him -

Lenny’s Workshop

This was his workshop,dug into earth, the same level he is now. Jars of nails crusted shut lie down amongst dusty sunbeams. I didn’t know him well, but I fished with him once and I didn’t catch anything.

The tools he owned, three worn down beat up power drills, three workbenches, one table saw, its blade gone like the man, are now laid down.

These tools, they look like mine, placed where I would place my own. The lumber, stacked, where I somehow know to stack my own: oak, some teak, there hidden a cutoff of birds eye maple, making impossible designs within it self.

The older man taught my old man how to build, sometime before I came along. Now, if my father teaches me, did he teach me too, is his hammer the hammer I swing? I will lend him a hammer, if he lends me talent.