Leave a message
for whoever is coming next.
Even if nobody is coming next.

—Elizabeth Gilbert

•••

Like the imprisoned man who
impressed mugshots printed
in newspapers onto small bars
of soap, then hid them between
playing cards.

Or internees during World War II,
imprisoned for their Japanese ancestry,
making art from found materials—
tin cans, fruit crates, onion sacks—
turning the ordinary into the lovely.

Like the man who carved teapots, teacups,
candy dishes and inkwells from slate
in the Utah desert, along with the creative hands
of painters, of sculptors who turned shells
into floral pins and figurines.

Each of us makes something from
seemingly nothing every day,
messages to others who might
happen upon what we’ve made.

Or maybe not.

What matters is that we made
something from something
discarded, something unwanted,
figuring out how to do
the undoable,
through trial and error,
sometimes under threat
of punishment.

We made something.
Sometimes people.
Sometimes art.
Sometimes love.
All of which are
so not nothing.

•••

For Eric Just, my talented artist of a brother-in-law, on his birthday, with admiration and love.