What Have I Built?

NaBloPoMo prompt for the day:

What was the last thing you fixed or built?

 

I  don’t think I’ve ever built anything, and I can’t remember the last time I fixed something.

Oh, yes, the last things I remember fixing, or trying to fix, were misfeeds in various printers. Does that count?

The last thing I really remember fixing, or trying to fix, was the lock mechanism of a lock on my bedroom door in our house on Alto Road, about 1990.

 

 

 

It was one of those old locks, at least 100 years old. It looked like this:

 

I don’t remember if I fixed it, or what happened to it, but I did write a poem about it, with the usual overtones of a metaphor:

 

Fixing the Lock

 

 

Lock broken after years of use.

Removed from the wrench of the door

slim, tarnished as a cigarette box.

Brass, flat, it sat in the wood

like a coin in the eye of the dead.

 

Unscrewed from its long residence,

entirely slipping out into hand

like a secret passageway opening

smooth,silent, dust in the grease.

Six small screws loosened, removed,

clotted with timedust, oil, doordust.

 

Brass box opens, shows

springs, clips, buds of metal

oilblack,sandgrime,

now to the blind repair,

uncertain reassemblage.