Handle with Care (poem)

Handle With Care

Handle with care, don’t fall

You were meant to keep a grip

Or pass the card

Along to surer hands

Or never pick it up at all

Here is life

The half-done project

Like the others

Well begun

Or hoarded in the handbasket among

Buttons, coins, tokens

Bobby pins, tacks, screws, dead batteries

Burned out light bulbs

Note paper, scrap paper

Pencils and pens

Pens that have written nothing for years

For years the public story dropped away

Limestone facings undermined by acid rain

Crushing some unwary stray

Shuffler on the fog-bound avenue

Thud and Rebound

(2014, Stephanie Foster)