Entropy

More than wear goes into things breaking;
more than mistakes, more than the roughness of earth
when machines match wits or witlessness with it.
More than poor engineering, manufacture, maintenance;
more than honest use, but less than atoms wearing out
or what’s inside them. (Nothing, too, gets tired -- tired
of being nothing, and so came everything,
and the first act was shattering, and all light is decadence.)
Machine and I meet at a fashioned edge: this is my hand,
I say, and mind; this is my design, a symphony of shapes,
abandoned to your need, it says. Machines are not slaves
and we are not masters. The doing lacks a narrative
and closure is a lie – pretty, like a satin bow or metal clasp.
Everything breaks; nothing dies. Design forsakes. Makers are unmade.

*

A bit serious for me, of late. Also, a bit discursive, but a philosophical poem now and then is fine. An agnostic's manifesto, perhaps with a bit of complaint belying the skepticism.

I spend a lot more time, lately, dealing with machines and tools, since we live in the country on a small bit of land. I am NOT by nature "handy," or good at fixing things, but have had to get better at it to avoid going mad or broke from hiring handymen for everything. 

Agnostic? I'm more of an animist. Things are alive, they conspire against me; feel spite and sometimes pity.

The inner workings of some machines are better known to me, now: the balance, the cause-effect, the feel. But of course, "machine" is any device, including the human body, which also breaks down. And the poem; I'd like to be able to grow them, but they need making.