The Marvelous Thingamajig
I found it half-buried
in the forgotten geography
between a gutter and a curb,
a bent little relic
the color of old rain.
Nobody claimed it.
Nobody searched for it.
Cars hissed past
without so much as a glance.
Yet there it waited,
patient as a crown
lost by a careless king.
Perhaps it is a compass
for navigating dreams.
Perhaps it is a key
to a door that hasn't been invented yet.
Perhaps it is the missing gear
from the machinery of the moon.
The experts would disagree.
They would hold it beneath fluorescent lights,
consult manuals,
measure angles,
declare with certainty:
"Discarded scrap metal."
But experts are not always qualified
to recognize magic.
Children understand this.
So do poets.
The crow who inspected it
with a sideways eye
seemed impressed.
The wind paused long enough
to turn it over.
Even the sunlight
spent an extra minute
polishing its rust.
I carried it home
in my pocket
like a sacred artifact.
By evening
it had become
a telescope,
a dragon's tooth,
a royal seal,
a fossil from tomorrow.
Marvelous thingamajig,
unknown and unnecessary,
you remind me
that wonder is not found
inside precious things.
Wonder is the strange alchemy
that turns the ordinary
into treasure.
And somewhere beneath the ocean,
a curious girl would smile,
recognizing at once
what the rest of the world
mistook for trash.
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