Do You Ever Feel Like a Broken Rake, Abandoned Beside a Man-made Lake?

I want to look you in the eye,
but you’re not a look-into-each-other’s-eyes
kind of guy.

I want to ask: Do you ever feel
like a broken rake, abandoned
beside a man-made lake—
sure your use has run out,
if it was ever really there?

If so, I’d like to quote you now:
Feelings aren’t facts.

Don’t you remember saying that?
Or was it only true when you said it—
when the feelings were mine?
I don’t think so.

It’s universal.
The truth is, you are the lake—
designed, deliberate, paid for,
wanted and needed, tended to.
Cleaned in summer, treated before winter,
a line item in the landscaping budget
year after year.

Even the flaws—
a fountain that doesn’t run—
linger on someone’s to-do list,
and as he walks by,
it pains him to see it still.

You may feel like an accident, a mistake,
like that quiet fountain
that never sees the blueprints
filed away after it was installed.

The lake may think it arrived
by happenstance,
never knowing it was shaped
by the hands of those
who walk its edges every day—
walkers who are glad to see it.