Jay Howard

Dad’s old garage is full of gadgets, some with small engines.
The instruction manuals always contain many languages,
but there is never any diagram or mention of the
essential thing. The wall is cubbies of gently shifting objects 
that take definite form when touched. I carry them with me.
I empty the garage. They appear again, intractably. Somehow, 
it is the way we want it. In the middle, obscuring the workbench,
rests a hill of boxes full of The Collection. A still life. 
An old metal pitcher. A milk can. A belt sander.
That time we made a wooden folding knife with a jigsaw and nail. 
An old go-kart. A reincarnation. The Golden Gems of Life 
and other books. A lifelong marriage in the grand old style. 
Fifty years running. A coffee can full of pull handles 
that will let me open anything my whole life long.

Jay Howard is a teacher and poet living in Springfield, Missouri. His poems have appeared in The New Territory, Frogpond, the Thieving Magpie, and elsewhere.