Poetry is Junk

I love junk yards.
Full of every nameless nothing.
Empty of every so-called something.

Let's face it, Shoppers,
They aren't your regular,
Spit-and-polished, shopping centre.

No crafty price tags, either.
Nor any of that regulated,
Mind-conditioning hype.
No Red-Light Specials.
No in-your-face signs.
And certainly no screaming
Public announcements.

Just stuff,
never-ending stuff.
Silent stuff.
Stuff oozing
Their own exhausted voice.
It’s the stuff
from which Poems are made.

Someone,
somewhere, sometime,
made that stuff.
I am sure some were poets.
You can tell.

Maybe that's the appeal.
It's all old, the rusty,
All wrinkled, the pieces,
Absorbed with life.
The life of the many, ever so
Many makers, mostly unknown.

I love junk yards,
So I went to one today,
And brought me home,
A poem.

~~~
Paterson Potpourri - June 2005