The Hardware store

Today, redemption finds me sitting

on the wooden floor

of my local hardware store,

gazing at useful things.

Helpful people with embroidered name tags walk by, 

pointing the way—

In this sacred place plumbing can be explained.  

Plaster illumined.

Wander the aisles of bins with me and

look at bits of things that don’t make sense.

We needn’t feel worse for our ignorance. 

Someone knows what it's all for.

Possibility and hope hover over each spool of rope,

each box of nails, the rows of tools.

Hearts lift with the thought of a life made new—

a failed and broken life fixed up,

duct-taped,

and painted over

so that no one need ever know it was broken.
                                    Rhonda Palmer