Don't Touch My Junk

Bending Light

The junk drawer stacks eye level

where I drink my morning coffee

the stainless pull an easy reach

with my free hand.  Paws shingle

in baleful prayer, brown eyes

shoulder a tented brow, the dog

steeps at my feet in ethnographic studies. 

A Master Lock, indifferent

to a bag of loose keys

freebooter screws and their suitor

tools, a Philips and two flat heads

pair of needle nose rounding out

a handyman’s quartet, all of it shot through

with the unraveled mind of baling twine

I can’t recall never having been entwined

or the reason I bought it in the first place.   

Blame it on the coffee, but with a little rooting

some minor adjustment and twine

encoded with a series of knots

a handy gizmo for the bending of light

sits waiting for trials, ready to extrude

the first molten rays of morning.

A golden light with give, it yields

with a squeak when run through the maze

burning my hand when I heft it to cool

smoking on the table, driving off the dog

a radiant tiara to wear 
with your pilled pink bathrobe.