Authorship

There’s a drawer, a sort of junk

Drawer, subdivided by small,

Lidless boxes with labels

On the edges, more or less

Arbitrary nonsense words

That carry faint suggestions

Of nation, gender, culture,

But nothing reliable.

What sort of a word is Neh?

Claim, grunt, curse, or negation?

A lot more where that came from.

Here’s what you do with the drawer—

Whenever you have something

That doesn’t go anywhere,

Not a tchotchke for display,

Not a tool for rare odd jobs,

Not a piece of paperwork

Or a proper memento,

Just something small, trivial,

Half-unclassifiable—

You can toss it in the drawer.

Don’t watch to see where it lands.

Throw it in, then shut the drawer.

Once in a while, rearrange

Those open, labeled boxes.

Do this a few years or so.

If you spot a box that’s full,

Take it out and replace it

With a fresh box, new label.

Turn the full box upside down,

So it spills on your table,

And examine all its things.

They form the definition,

Now, of that arbitrary

Label you made years ago.

How do you feel about them?

How do you like your author?