The Broken
Something is always broken.
Nothing is perfect longer than a day—
Every roof has a broken tile,
Every mouth a chipped tooth.
Something is always broken
But the world endures the break:
The broken twig is how we follow the trail.
The broken promise is the one we remember.
Something changed is pushed out the door,
Sad, perhaps, but ready, too ready, for the world.
Something is always broken.
Something is always fixed.
This poem is excerpted from The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace & Renewal (Storey Publishing, 2023), edited by James Crews, a collection of highly accessible, uplifting poetry celebrating the small wonders and peaceful moments of everyday life.
This is the second of five poems from the anthology reprinted in Terrain.org over the second week of October 2023. As an introduction to the poems, read James Crews’s “The Wonder of Small Things”.
“The Broken” by Alberto Ríos, from A Small Story About the Sky. Copyright © 2015 by Alberto Ríos. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.
Alberto Ríos was named Arizona’s first Poet Laureate in 2013. He is the author of many poetry collections from Copper Canyon Press, including Not Go Away Is My Name; A Small Story About the Sky; The Dangerous Shirt; The Theater of Night; and The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body, which was nominated for a National Book Award.
Header photo by djedj, courtesy Pixabay. Photo of Alberto Ríos courtesy Blue Flower Arts.
