Gail Hennessy #29 Ode to Tradies

Ode to Tradies

 

 

For thirty years
we have skated the gloss
of wall tiles on the bathroom floor

 

The renovators arrive
plumber, carpenter, electrician, tilers
painter still to come

 A tiler leaves one footprint’s

shadow on wet cement
an echo of handprints
in ancient caves, his signature
not likely to be revered in future time

 

A sculptor he shapes
joins floor to walls
and buts the patchwork snug

 

An artist he
ponders the colour of
grouting the perfect match
between ivory
alabaster and French vanilla

 

With sponge he caresses the sheen of wall and floor

 

We will walk this silenced nightingale floor
freed from the assassin of
slip and slide and fall and break

                                                      for a while …

 

Gail Hennessy 2016.