Round Peg in a Square Hole

Growing up in the hinterland
with northern rednecks
who never let one forget
he was not of their tribe,
their clan, so to speak.

Probably wasn’t the cause
of my propensity
for the adrenaline rushing through my body
and my feeling like Buster Keaton
falling over the waterfall,
clad only in a barrel —
but it sure didn’t help.

In addition to my otherness
I had various and sundry
dis–abilities —
at least, differences
in attention and perception.

These took more errors during trials
than grains of sand in the Sahara.

Finally, years in the making,
I learned to twist halves
of the kaleidoscope,
and began to see the world
in ways that made sense to me.

All to say,
I come to whatever
little bits of wisdom
I display on my journey
along the path of noble truths,
from the skinned knees, black eyes, and bruised knuckles
of a square peg in a round hole — or vice versa.