The faces of children, eager and innocent
portend a future hopeful and good
while adults afar debate and wrangle
over dollars and power
these seeds are watered and fed
with both love and garbage
I pray their innate wisdom will help them
to glean what they need to grow strong
in spite of the decay and wrongs meted out
by so many of us elders in our misguided pride.
Faces of children, open and ready
lead us all to our place in the sun.
My partner Jane has a favorite faucet
which she has mounted on our bathroom basin
it is one of those with a raised and arching spout
a small version of what one would see in
a doctor’s office.
She loves it because its great for washing her hair
and I’m pleased that she has the knowledge and skill
to have mounted it herself though
she placed its base backwards and as a result
the faucets turn the reverse of what would be expected.
Though its been several years like that
each morning as I shave and wash there
I still fumble with their turning directions and feel
that something just isn’t as its supposed to be.
We had noticed an occasional dripping
slowly in our absence and hard to detect
and finally I decided to deal with that
and take the so-called washerless faucets apart.
Washerless faucets are supposed to be better
than their washered predecessors but I wonder
as I pay ten times as much for the delicate spring
and flimsy plastic sleeve that serve in the washers place.
In completing the repair I realized an opportunity
to correct the turning direction of the faucets
to how they are supposed to be and did just that
so simple after all these years.
Now each morning I find myself still trying to turn them
the wrong way rather than how they are supposed to be
and wonder at my conditioning and reconditioning
only to find my condition not how its supposed to be
They were wrong and now they are right and now
I am fumbling with their rightness just as I did
with their wrongness.
Is anything ever what its supposed to be?
Thankfully not — and that’s how its supposed to be.