My toddler dumped
the puzzle pieces onto the floor,
and started with the eyes,
the easily identifiable face,
of his favorite cartoon train
engine.
He tried ways of fitting them together –
ways I would no longer try –
unafraid of making mistakes,
uncolonized by methodology, or
standards of correctness.
In a word: inefficient.
But he turns the pieces this way and that
and succeeds in the goal
of assembling the picture
like the one on the box.
The puzzle complete,
he smiles and says, “Destructo!”
breaking it into pieces again with great joy.
“Let’s do it again,” he says,
and does
a little faster.
Seeing immediately
the way it should be done,
and realizing that the speed
of alleged progress
is the enemy of originality,
watching him struggle,
and patient enough to let him,
my only wish
is that the pieces could fit
in different ways,
so we could build
a new kind of engine,
One that could never
drive us
ever forward
on the rails.
🥰
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