Low Country Boil (Frogmore Stew)

"To rescue the banal is every lyric poet's ambition" -Charles Simic

Advice for young poets, novice prospectors: 
when you're sifting through the litterbox,
you shouldn't be surprised if you find 
something other than gold.

I skipped another high school reunion this summer,
and I finally understood what they say about time 
seeming to speed up as you get older: 
the last ten years felt a fraction as long 
as the decade preceding them.
It would have been interesting to rehaunt my old 
swampy hunting grounds. When I think of all the years 
I spent wallowing in that greasy creek,
or kneeling on its slimy banks, hoping to snag something 
other than stunted crayfish and rusted Schlitz cans, 
when I think of all the time I wasted 
thinking I could, indeed, rescue the banal 
from where it festered in the mud, in the funk...

Maybe I just didn't have what it took, maybe this
just wasn't what I was meant to do, to be. Though
to be honest, I haven't come up with anything better yet.
Here I am, rattling toward middle age and still
cobbling things together, whacking nails 
into planks of knotty pine too waterlogged 
for the fire, still chucking stems and rinds 
and bits of gristle into the pot,
into this half-baked mess of my life
set on permanent simmer, always just shy
of coming to a full boil. Here I am, 
still supergluing the cracked sporks 
and laying them out alongside 
the duct-taped Styrofoam cups.
I fill the cups with murky cocktails 
stirred together from the dregs 
of every dusty bottle behind the bar. 

Still I dip my spoon, slurping up the slop,
wondering what the chances are of coming across
a jewel slipped from its fitting, some stray gold nugget
dropped by some molar-splitting miracle 
into the broth.