Working on car engines and in fish cases
has enabled me to cook
for often
when the process of cooking is a balance between hands and heat

my old fingers
battered and beat up as they've been by the heat of a Pontiac V8 manifold
or five hundred pounds of shaved ice every day for seven years with no gloves

shrug and shake it off
as an old cowboy shakes the dust from his chaps
after being thrown to the dirt by a horse who doesn't realize
how many times the cowboy has been in the dirt before
and gotten up