Of what use are the things others call
useless right from the start? When I
was a child, my mothers poured a paper
sackful of legumes onto a winnowing
basket. While they worked peeling tubers
and severing small animals at the joint,
this was a way to keep me occupied—
Tedious exercise in finding each dark
scar tucked into the side of a bean;
from there, tearing and pulling away
at the spandex-like sheath. You could say this
might be practice for all the things I didn’t
know yet: about choosing one problem
at a time from the heap to soak overnight
in water. About shielding what I can
before it’s time to give up the heart.
In response to Via Negativa: O tempora, o mores.