Poem: The Repairer

The Repairer

for David Mane

The repairer thrums to the puzzle of the world,

no matter that it is insoluble, that there are billions

of pieces he will never touch,

that each of us see only a tiny sliver of the whole.

He forges his path, noticing everything,

giving each moment and each person his full attention,

sending out invisible filaments, linkages, connections,

and does this quietly, drawing people close

to whisper in their ears, smiling, spilling largesse.

He picks up a piece, tries it with another,

and when the pieces fit, as they sometimes do,

that is his reward, his private joy, and he moves

to another piece, untiringly, through the years of his life:

it is only afterwards that we understand what

he has done, how much has been repaired in his wake.

Adelaide’s David Adès lives in Sydney where he hosts the WestWords Poets’ Corner podcast and is a member of the Pennant Hills Poets Group. He won the 2005 Wirra Wirra Vineyards Short Story Prize, 2014 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize, and is a Pushcart Prize triple nominee. His poems have appeared in literary magazines in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Europe. His most recent books, all published in the past year, are The Heart’s Lush Gardens, A Blink of Time’s Eye, and The Toolmaker and Other Poems, from which today’s poem and our accompanying photo comes.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.

Header image:
Pexels/Ivan S