Where the Stories Live

You are drawn to the broken plaster. The slats underneath.
The molding and beaded boards without paint.
The abandoned in need of repair.

There are better things to see, without doubt.
The already restored. The apparently pristine.
Paint and plaster picture-perfect for the tourists.

But you know the work it takes to get from broken
to something ready for the tourists.
Something presentable at least.

You know. Restoration is slow
and takes persistence and time
and sometimes looks worse before it is ready
to show.

This is where the story lives. In the work,
in the ugly steps that are half learning,
half trial and error. The demolition

that comes before the reconstruction. This
is where the story, which might have ended,
which came so close to ruin

becomes itself again. Never the same.
No, never that, but a new version for a new time
discovered not in the finished product,
but the work.

About this poem.

Life has broken me a time or two. At times, I feel like one of my restoration projects, the cracks too evident as the ground shifts below me.

A poem about life, about restoration work, about me.

The photograph was taken in Lenox, Mass., at the Mount, Edith Wharton’s home.

Tom