It will take a while.

It will take a while.

When I left school,

Mister Jacks

The short, round teacher

With the blackheads

Broken veins

Freckles and red-rimmed eyes,

His hair as unruly

As a prepubescent first-year

Before his spirit was removed,

And mister Stout

Who wore patches

On the elbows of his standard issue

Unfashionable tweed,

With a dusting of dandruff on the collar

Cigarette stained teeth

And whisky on breath

He tried to sweeten

With mint imperials,

He was probably only twenty-five,

But was an ancient smelly

Bag of old bones

Who was on his way

To hell

I am sure.

Anyway,

Now that I’ve remembered

Where I was going,

They both said,

Working as a Smith

Was a good job

It would bring me closer to god

And nature.

The sweat of hard labour

Honest toil

Better by far

Than art college

For a skinny little colliery boy.

It would build me up

Make a man of me.

I wasn’t convinced

And looked in at the forge

Behind the shaft

When the winding wheels

Were still being used for caging men

On a journey to the centre of the earth,

The Smith was a big man

With banana-skinned hands

Full of calluses,

Misshapen knuckles

From several evy, ammer blows

And an assortment of liver spots

That ran higgildy-piggildy up his arms

As if they were trying to escape

The heat.

He was puffy, ruddy

With a sweat-stained face

His eyes were big,

As round as golf balls

Looking set to pop,

From the effort he put into

Each hammer blow.

The heat cooking them

From the inside out,

Dimsum dumplings.

I shudder to think if I would

Ever have eaten sheep's eyes

With or without hoisin sauce

But some people do,

Apparently.

The butcher ate brains

It didn't save him

From closure

When the supermarket moved in.

The Smith closed with the pit,

Never to open again,

The fire went out

Of the village.

Forging a different path

Well away from the furnace of

Coke, coal

And fossilised teachers

But no further away

From imposter syndrome.