The bush mechanic pushes declares he has no talent.
He pushes a greasy hand through his hair.
It is nothing, he says, to built an engine from fashioned parts;
nothing to make seized parts whirr and sing.
It is what he does when a wheel locks,
an engine creates and eats its own filings.
He lives in chaos; his path blocked by lumps of steel;
ivy darkening the view from a make-shift kitchen.
The magic is under his unruly grey locks.
He can see beyond the seized parts, through the rust,
to the perfect solution.
It is not learned in the classroom.
The best teacher, he reckons, is being stuck
beyond the boo-aye, the engine spitting its guts,
when your only mates are your mind,
a shifter and the outback’s gnawing heat.
