The poem about the clog in the drain pipe under my house, under my kitchen sink.

This is a poem that includes a hacksaw.
Every poem should include a hacksaw.
I suppose you shouldn't get a clog out of your drain with a hacksaw,
but it was my drain pipe, and my hacksaw, and darn it, it worked.

Here is how I found out about the clog in my drain pipe.
It started when I was crawling under the house
with the engineer who is advising me about how to fix my foundation.
If you haven't guessed, this is what they call a fixer house, and
I thought I had fixed the plumbing well enough to last
until I fix the foundation, but I thought wrong.
Because there, down in the crawl space under the kitchen sink,
there was wet clay,
and a tiny puddle against the concrete wall.

And I wanted to believe the engineer
when he said it probably wasn't anything.
But a person has to check.
So once the engineer was gone, I stayed in my coveralls,
and turned on the kitchen sink,
and crawled underneath the house again.
I  crawled back toward the kitchen sink, and I could hear water flow,
and there, right under my kitchen sink,
I discovered the fountain of youth,
water flowing up
and out
from an un-plugged clean-out opening in the drain.

I can see this poem so clearly in my head,
the white pipe, and the fountain,
the slurping sound the water made as it fell,
and then there is the whole mechanistic troubleshooting process that went through my head,
which led me inexorably to the conclusion that the drain must be clogged,
and I can still feel the poem in the memory of my elbows, covered in gray cotton twill,
digging themselves into the hard clay as my eyes watched the water fall.
I wish I could write the poem so that you could see it, so that you could ride with me
over 23rd Avenue to the hardware store, and home again,

It is poetry to climb under a house on your elbows and knees,
there is poetry in exploring with a springy metal plumber's snake,
there is poetry in the reckless recognition that it is my hacksaw
and my drain pipe,
and I can damn well use the one to take the other apart,
and glue everything back together again. I can only
hope

it's a poem, because there's no way this is a coherent story,
but plumbing is never a coherent story, if you ask me,
plumbing is the best kind of incoherent poetry, just me and the
hacksaw and the snake under the house, and a screwdriver to
disassemble the clamp where the plastic drain pipe
joined the old cast iron,
poetry is that wet smell when I found the clog,
the slippery, gooey mess that came out on my fingers,
purple primer works better than purple prose,
in my humble opinion,
poetry is the swish of purple primer and the smell of glue
when I take my handiwork and put it back together.

Poetry is mud and the scrape on my finger from the time
I slipped with the hacksaw.
Poetry is a story I am only just learning how to tell.