Blue Memory, Splintered Edge

In the back, behind the snow tires,

a stack of forgotten life,

and there it was, tilted

on a bald, black rubber stack.

The birdhouse. High school shop class.

Fingers clumsy with the hammer then,

the nails bending more than going in.

Its blue paint, once a hopeful sky,

now just a ghost, flaking, pale.

One side, where I'd used a knot-hole

as a shortcut, now a ragged gap,

a missing tooth, a flaw

I couldn't hide even back then.

It smelled of dust, and the damp,

cluttered air of what we put away

but never quite throw out. A small monument

to wanting to make something

real. And the realness of it,

all this chipped, leaning, empty wood.