What Cannot Be Mended

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

I have met with things that

cannot be mended:

sweethearts,

garden tools,

and once a glassy-eyed herring gull

whose right wing (or was it left?)

lay beside him,

on a cold slab of cement,

tethered to his shoulder

by a single,

                dry

strand of tendon.

I took his last breath from him

and, decades later,

still keep it safe in a secret chamber

                of my heart.

What of this fabricated world?

While I do hear the despairing mouths

and carpal tunneled-hands

screaming of its rather

inconvenient brokenness,

I will admit:

I take a certain comfort in its undoing;

I’ve never known an act of severance

to be anything less than a new beginning.

I did, after all, leave my mother’s womb

and our singular identity

and I became someone else entirely.

Oh, yes, I too could partner up with fear

and be all the rage at parties,

but,

And maybe my age is starting to show,

I prefer to sit, alone, on the blunt edge of a

fog-pressed mountain and

be transfixed by wonderment.

Perhaps I am as odd as they say,

for I often look upon decaying things

and take joy in the questions that

arrive

like shimmering carrion beetles.

Questions and beetles,

and their alchemy.

What will become of us?

You’ve probably asked this question.

What do I have to offer?

But, perhaps, not this one.

I like questions;

They are like double-winged birds scratching

at scattered seeds

among ashes.

Only when the questions die

will I lose faith

in what cannot be mended.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author

From "Wonderment: New and Selected Poems"

A work in progress

Feel free to share