The Mechanics

We are the Mechanics, the strange breed.
Hands greasy that sometimes bleed.
Trying to reach into an impossible place.
Fingertip vision sees into impossible space.

Unwilling servants of some half-baked engineer.
Whose impossible placement of parts we fear.
We smile and conquer his obstacles everyday.
We smile we know a better way.

We are the scape–goats of vehicular malfunctions.
Often given little or no symptoms at these junctions.
Our metal patients can’t tell us what’s wrong.
Diagnostics sung on an exponential song.

Surgeons wish they had our touch.
What we take for granted they want that much.
Our wages are surgeon’s pocket change.
No fancy office or letters after our names.

We are weatherproof, sometimes wet, most times cold.
No warm O.R. just a building that’s windy and old.
Mechanics are inventive to an astronomical degree.
There’s more than one way to look at the tree.

Of procedure, the tree of patience, the tree of time.
Honed by years of frustration turned sublime.
His hands a story of every vehicle that cut him till he cried out.
Hands scared by a profession that’s not forgiving of mistakes, of doubt.

Our collars the deepest of blue.
Empathy with mechanical things it’s true.
Head full of ATF and over the road diesel in our veins.
We bleed diesel and Freightliners its all the same.

It’s easy to blame the Mechanic for what’s wrong.
Even though you’ve known about the problem all along.
If your truck makes it from point A to Point B.
It’s not divine intervention but the mechanic you see.

We’re often maligned and spoke poorly of.
Blamed for some engineer’s bad idea above.
Common sense, above thoughts of service.
Bad designs make us nervous.

I’m proud to be a part of this mechanical alumni.
You don’t see the things we see.
A more thoughtful human you won’t find.
Electrical schematics and drive trains wander my mind.

We’re the Mechanics We’re the Ones.
We do the jobs everyone wants done.
We do the jobs no one wants to do.
We are the magicians, We are the few.