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For weeks once you’d installed it, the half-wish
Against your better judgment, those skyward looks
Through maples, keening for a summer storm.
And when one broke at last, lashing the wires down,
We ran out to its place through sheets of rain
As thick as spray flung from a slamming prow,
Over the retaining wall, round the benighted house,
Me holding a vestigial umbrella against the heavens
While you cursed and fussed and ratcheted the pump.
Then both of us took turns to haul the line,
Yanking at its taught resistance like
Two rowers desperate at the sculls
As the motor choked, gasped, sputtered,
Refused to turn. Then the half-cough snarl
Of sparks somewhere within, the put put put
Suddently split by the great rending roar
And brackish spume vomiting out of the exhaust,
The whole squat miracle shivering to life.
You looked at me then, Daedalus in sodden clothes,
Sharing this planned and executed triumph
As the lights flicked on in the windows.
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Love this. I can't wait to read the sequel, "Icarus in Sodden Clothes" where you fail spectacularly to start your dad's generator.