by Sigrid E. Mortensen

© 2023

The fixer.

The tinkerer.

The repairman.

The fiddler.

The meddler.

The taker-apart.

The reassembler.

The one with the calm connection

The perspective

The insights

The inspired words

That ease what’s broken.

The one who hears the noises

The aches

The screeching cries, and who

By disassembling

Cleaning

Clearing

And piecing back together

Eases the fears

The angers

The frustrations

The disappointments

That had been clogging up the gears.

So skilled was I 

That I would oil every squeak

Even before it began

Spending more 

And more of my time

Anticipating every soreness

Circumventing every pain.

And yet

My eyes grow cloudy

And my fingers clumsy

And I can no longer fix

Every complaint.

Despite my best efforts

The noises return

And scream fix me!

Fix me!

Fix me!

I yearn to help

And yet

I begin to understand

As my ability wanes

And my maturity waxes

That not every break

Is meant to be mended,

That not every intervention

Is a gift,

That sometimes the grit in the cog

Must work its way through

On its own,

That part of the grand design 

Of this glorious machine

Is to allow the dirt in

And by sticking the gears

And jamming the pulleys

New pathways are grazed and gouged and formed

And beautiful new mechanisms 

Are born.

The oyster’s sand is that from which the 

Precious grows.

If I am brutally honest 

I also nod to those times

When by taking it apart

I broke it more

Made it worse

Deepened the sorrow

Foiled my best intentions.

So finally

I retire

Step back

Look from a distance

And begin to see beauty in the rusty patches

Hear harmony in the creaks and groans

Notice the miracle of new life

Spontaneously sprung

From the remnants of what I once fled,

From what I once worked

So hard

To avoid,

From the ravages of time

And life

And entropy

And wrong turns

And missed opportunities

And crossed wires

And misfires

And parts worn through with age.

These are no longer my job to salvage

Indeed

Decay is the fertile ground

That feeds the desire

For scrapping the dysfunctional

For releasing old designs

For beginning

Finally

Anew.