Debris

Some of it comes up easily,
a mere tug and your fingers
pull it loose and it is done,
another tile to toss aside,

stained, mildewed and half rotted,
long past it’s life span,
a relic really, of another time,
overdue for death, while

some of it fights,
and you have to use a chisel
and the large rubber mallet
to chip it away bit by resistant bit,

every scrap a battle, each
removal leaving small scars
on the floor underneath. It
takes time, these last remnants

of past. Something in their soul, even
stained and ruined as the rest, resist,
and it takes far more work
than you would have imagined

for such a small room, far more
effort to shed the last broken history,
but you cannot stop, for
until it is done,

Nothing new can take it’s place.

About This Poem

This week I began to strip the floor in my tiny little downstairs bathroom. It’s small, as mere  24 square feet, but pulling the linoleum tiles up has proven to be a battle that took a couple of nights to complete.

And it reminded me of our own lives, and how often we try to build on top of our brokenness  rather than healing it first, and then building. And how that works no better than laying good tile on bad….

And yes, the not so pretty photograph is from a pile of the old tile, ripped from it’s base and thrown in the middle of the kitchen while I worked.

Tom