Wouldn’t Want to Scare You

Fortunate you aren’t told much
at the outset what you’ll have to do
to re-construe yourself into a viability –

the craft you’ll have to master to produce
an instrument as true to your peculiar
spangled depths and curves and paths

and hints – angles, tints and traits –
as you can make from tools you’ll also
have to make. Surely a mistake to tell you

too much of the fortitude and disrepute
and aptitude for bearing next to
an intolerable incapacity to get it right

that you will need to cultivate to fight
your way to any kind of equanimity:
the keen-aged surgically precise

necessities of knife and tincture, blade
and hook that you will need to cook
and slice and splice and spice a life.

Better not elucidate the rife inevitably
killing fates that lurk ahead to dare
you. Wouldn’t want to scare you.

.