The Second Life of Mistakes
Somewhere, six feet below the ground, she sleeps.
A stone marks her grave.
Not this one. Not the one that lies here,
misspelled name emblazoned on the grey block of granite,
smooth, save for a few carved words,
a perfect ironing board.
Few will ever visit the graveyard.
But this mistake, never wasted,
will serve for generations to come.
About this poem.
Sometimes our mistakes outlive us. If lessons were learned, sometimes that is a good thing. Take it from someone with an outsized number of mistakes in his pocket.
The gravestone/ironing board is at the Hancock Shaker Village.
Tom