The Old Tin Jug Poem by Caroline Misner

Rust has burrowed black holes
through its porcelain skin;
bullets have punctured the tin, a firing squad
having battered it out of shape;
little remains of its creamy glaze.

It was already a corpse when I found it
hidden among the brown brush
by the abandoned homestead overlooking
the lake, where dun hills rush down
to the valley, and beyond

grope the murky shores, already rimmed
with ice, like lace, thin as paper
and as cold as the heart that shot holes through
the pitcher; I thought I would keep it,
a useful planter in the spring.

Oh, daddy, did I disappoint
when I fetched it from its grave of weeds,
the veils of rust and amber that shrouded
it like a sickly bride? You wondered
what use I would have for such a relic;

it can’t even hold water, its heart
annihilated and pocked with holes,
though the sun still filters through its light
to fill its hollow bowl;
by now it would be buried in snow.

It sits by the woodstove now,
leaning like an exhausted old man
against the stone, warming its marrow
in the firelight, heat seeping through
the holes and fingering the room

like so many jaundiced eyes.
It needn’t a purpose;
It just survives.