My father sawed beams and rays
from the sun and placed them in a bin
with odd cuts of wood and a length
of leftover pipe. He put the sun itself
on a high shelf by the window
next to a cracked pot.
Clouds and all the billows
and wisps are mostly tangled
in a cardboard box, but some are wound
on a spool that hangs from a pegboard
over his bench. Rain and several puddles
are stored in peanut butter jars,
like turpentine, right next to the sun.
Everything here is something it is not:
a hip flask is not a crime;
whitewall tires, no matter how old,
are not a want; and a coffee can
of screws, half-filled,
is still not a childhood.
–
Brian Delaney is a writer and psychologist living in Somerville, MA. His poetry has been published in Pirene’s Fountain, The Fourth River, and Paterson Literary Review and is forthcoming in The Comstock Review.