(credit: Lewis Hine, Wikimedia Commons)

               

      (Photo via <a href="https://www.goodfreephotos.com/"> 

                                Good Free Photos</a>)

                     Frank

I saw my father, putting on his boots.

He worked a plastics factory.

Shift work, but still …an okay job. 

Until …

World competition toughened. Men were pushed.

And pushed. To sprinting on a steel grate floor.

At fifty-three, a man's foot bones, thus stressed

Form growths that surgeons actually call "spurs".

(Some cowboy song!)

I saw my father, unaware of me,

Just putting on his socks, bone weary, numb,

Now fingering his left heel, gingerly,

Eyes hooded with fatigue, big shoulders set,

Grim-brooding, fighting back despair,

And wondering … how long he could hold on.

   

           

                                     Calcaneal spur 

         (credit: Dr. R. S. Pradeep Raj, via Wikimedia Commons)