Poetry Pleases: Left-handed Scissors
"Suddenly I can clearly see I'm a left-handed-scissors-sort-of-me...'' Jane Williams's poems are a constant and very special delight.
I did not know
‘til someone told me so,,
watching me fail to cut a dead straight line
across white paper, that
I was using left-handed scissors.
At once I understood.
I’d cut my life with these, which
accounted for all those
strange shapes, wavery lines, bits
snipped off,
wiggly, squiggly strips
going? Nowhere. Wandering.
The odd curve, swerving dangerously
and cuts too short for safety
but long enough for joy.
“How foolish to choose him.”
(Yes! But his kiss was bliss!)
“Why did you leave?”
(Why indeed?)
“Five children.”
(Careless, I agree.)
“For worse or bettera.”
(etcetera….etcetera.)
You know the way
sensible right-handed-scissor-using
people say the obvious.
So looking thoughtfully at this right-hand pair
I saw
a poisoned chalice
(offered kindly, no malice intended,)
but I knew
the cost of using them would be
too high for me.
Now I can say of every wobbly line
“That was the left-handed scissors’ fault,
not mine!”
Suddenly
I can clearly see
I’m a left-handed-scissors-sort-of-me.
How tedious to go straight and inevitably
from A to B.
“So thank you. No! No! No!”
