Revisionist Poetry – Inventory of Maybe: Carver’s Kit, v.3

Dust falls like slow snow in my studio,
landing on bristles, on the rim of a jar,
on the carved lip of a cup that was never finished.
Tools lie in driftwood piles: knives, ribs, wire,
each one a fossil of a future I keep.

I imagine soapstone singing under the blade,
a thin, bright note—paper shavings at my feet—
or clay, yielding like fruit, cool and honest,
filling my palms with the weight of weather.
Anticipation lives in the hollow of my throat.

I am a hoarder of beginnings: boxes labelled maybe,
palettes that still smell of last year’s orange,
a coil of wire curled like a sleeping animal.
I buy time the way I buy materials — stockpiling hope —
mistaking accumulation for readiness.

Some mornings I tidy the heap into false order,
arrange brushes so the light will bother them less.
But the shelf is a mountain of could-be; my gaze climbs it,
and my hands refuse the first small leap. They wait.

Today a single thing changes: my palm finds a lump of clay.
It is cool. It is less than the thought of making, yet more.
I press my thumbs into its center; the world narrows to that press —
a crater, a promise, the first small yes.
Dust keeps falling, but my hands at last begin.