Someone Else’s Tools

You walk past the garage door and see them.
Someone else’s tools.
Some familiar, Ones you use yourself.
Some less so. You have to think through what they may be
and how they might be used.

Somehow, they are perfect. A still life without
all the 18th-century motifs of flowers and apples.
Cold iron. Spare parts. A work in progress,
unfinished.

You linger. Glad the owner is not there
to see your gazing. To see your mind,
both intimately watching and distantly imagining
how you might use those unfamiliar tools.
What might you make of them?
How long would it take to become proficient?

And slowly, the still life takes on a life of its own.
A movie of possibility. Of knowing that for all you know,
there is more.

There is beauty in that.
And hope.
and promise,
and at times just the slightest bit of recrimination
of what might have been.

About this poem

About tools. About art. About life. About therapy. About different views of beauty. About a persistent melancholy. Poetry is never about one thing.

I do not remember where I took the picture.

Tom