Kiki Dee, Elton John        Don’t go breaking my heart

It’s been thirty years plus since I last heard that song,

sitting in another car, another time        a broiling January

eating soggy sandwiches with my dad        his apprentice
We were half way through the job        Kiki Dee, Elton John

Don’t go breaking my heart        despite it all, the desperate battles

of a father and son, ideological to the marrow        to the death

he’d sit there alongside me, in that damn car, listening

to music beyond his culture, beyond his generations, as foreign to him

as his political youth was to me        far away, Austria        a war

as he always said, I had no idea about        Don’t go breaking my heart
Hot, soggy sandwiches       Kiki Dee, he, I, twinned        two sides

one coin, the currency of a job shared        we worked as one

pass me the plane, the glue, hoist that end        job done 
I enjoyed building that kitchen with him, then        with him

there, along the river        each time I hear that song, I’m there again

driving home at the end of the day together in comradely silence
I’ve learnt to forgive him        and sometimes I seek

his blessing still