My father wrote his name on things

My father wrote his name on things

Stephen J. Kennedy

My father wrote his name on things
etched squarely in uppercase on hardened alloy
steel, precision ground tools of his tooling trade
—gauge blocks, angle plates, morse taper reamers—
for their return if borrowed or misplaced.

My father wrote his name on things,

in pen with upright looping script or straight-
laced print on flyleaves of books and bibles, like this
thin prayer-rubbed, leather New Testament with Psalms, or
with black felt-tip marker on wooden-handled

hammers and saws, his name still there though
faded by the years and wear of work, and on the cuffs
of these faded yellow, blue-striped Watson work gloves
leathered palms work-creased & stained, finger tips worn

holy, lining threadbare smelling of dusty sweat.
I wear them even so, to hold on to him, as he
held on to me—to remember him &
weigh the reasons
my father wrote his name on things.

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Stephen J. Kennedy
Writer & Editor

Stephen lives and works in Peterborough, Ontario.

Photography by Andrea Garibay