Well it is the season of those ubiquitous yard sales. Michael Todd Steffen has a poem that sheds light on this seasonal phenomena.

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Perpetuity in Darkness Seeking Light
Emerges at a Yard Sale

A flawed dish bought for just a dollar
Bears the design of a symbolic thicket
Like a 9 of clubs, with geometric
Duplicated trees spaced to have
The eye, whichever it lands on, behold
This same tree for the forest. On the bordered
Gravy lip the chip, far as a gash,
Winces for sandpaper and a brush of polish
To camouflage in gloss with the kiln finish.

But tending to a blemish that’s so obvious
Absorbs your look to notice scrutinizing
Further signs of a life lived inside of
This dim mirror. It has been eaten from
And scrubbed and steamed a thousand times before—
And closer, dimmer still, a hair’s-width fissure
Where the plate would sever when in time
It gets mishandled in a crate or tantrum
Forking three ways for the pie it’s held,

For the lightly forwarded feet it’s served
For suppers. From our mouths unravel where all
We have stepped, no matter how we try
To keep the voyage undisclosed within,
No matter how we wish to rescue wares
Of use to mean something beyond their use—
Stood on the glass shelf of a cabinet
Out of hunger’s reach, surviving.

– Michael Todd Steffen

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