poet man (ii: a ball of clay)

how nice not to have to live
surrounded by everything we have broken:

our failures

our embarrassments

the curio shelf i made in grade 10 shop class
in spite of having no curios
no plans to acquire
no patience for right angles.

the ashtray i made fathers day 1977
when smoking was in and podge was in
and i was old enough to know
the smile on dad's never-smoked-a-day-in-my-life face
was also broken a round bowl a lump of grey
a small 7 thumb-print for a cigarette to rest
along the edge. useless. ugly.

if dad had turned it over he would have seen
poet man as child had taken the compass
from a protractor set (buffalo instruments
blue plastic case with also
30/60 and 45 angles plus ruler inscribed
in both metric and imperial: the two official languages
of how-far-the-moon-from-here?)

and carved a heart.

the international symbol for
i-don't-know-how-to-say.

a rough but dutiful thank-you was fashioned from a tongue of clay.
poet man as child waited for elves to haul it away.

add it to the list of times an apology was owed to someone.

but who? and why? the problem has never been
how to speak, only what to say.

the problem has never been
how-do-i-feel-about-what-just-happened
but did-it-happen-that-way-at-all?

let's be honest here:

all i am sure of in that story
is a red picnic table under a tall hickory tree.

that, and maybe the protractor set.

the word "podge" has the ring of truth
and so it stays.

the past is clay we mold and shape
to make our ugly useless gifts
and every broken thing we give away
is redeemed only by the heart we scratch beneath.

whoever the hell you are
reading these wasted broken words right now,
forget everything else i have written.
turn this poem over:

see? i love you, too.