Kintsugi

  ( a spill and scrub )  

 
When we first met  
After eyeing each other  
Like two hiding out in the open  
In the local library  
While thumbing  
The pages of our poetry,  
 
We both were thinking  
The same thing, weren’t we?  
I know I was  
As I’d study your face—  
A seemingly aloof expression  
That wore glasses.  
 
A barrier to hide behind,  
Or keep me at a distance?  
Intimidated  
For all of a day, or a week,  
Feeling less than perfect.  
So all of the above applied?  
 
The passage of time  
Would reveal what you saw  
And thought  
While the stalemate lasted,  
Till I barged into your life  
And your shrimp salad.  
 
I proceeded  
To chat you up  
In the guise of a critic  
While deftly spearing the salad  
And deconstructing your ink:  
A sonnet.  
 
I didn’t know a sonnet  
From the hole in my head!  
But on and on I went,  
Cleaning you out of shrimp!  
You were bemused,  
And accommodating.  
 
You’d think I’d catch on.  
You weren’t concerned with  
What I said,  
Which saved my bacon  
Once I realized  
I was an idiot—  
 
Advising and suggesting  
A consummate poet  
Of the Sonnet form  
How to edit his ink;  
Me, a writer without a clue.  
I humbly gave you a small bowl.  
 
With head bowed,  
I profusely apologized  
For the clumsy repairs I made.  
‘It’s beautiful all the same’,  
As you slowly  
Turned it in your hand.  
 
 
 
 
 
Kintsugi, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.