My poems are like gadgets my father used to make—-a sharpener for an old kind of lawn mower that nobody used but him—-remote control for his old TV when all the new ones came with them. I remember the grin from his easy chair as he pulled its choke-like knob and listened as the sound decreased. And the carpet’s rise, soft on my bare sole, where its cable moved snake-like. My father made clever devices for specific uses. His reward, like mine, was not only use, but also joy in success, and the occasional approving glance from an amused onlooker. I go to my dark storage room sometimes to consider again the pedal from an old sewing machine that he lashed up with the speedometer cable from an old car, and the motor from somewhere that turned the cable and drove its tiny end with small tools, fine as a dentist’s drill, for carving his art. And there I write a few lines, not as clever as his devices, but useful in the same kind of way.