Schooled to the pencil-smudged hand,
the spiral notebook’s gouging coil,
the wrong-bladed scissor,
the teacher-approved goof-angled wrist,

the lefty later must unlearn
the wrong-handed pitch,
the fumbled catch,
and batting with the wrong arm.

Thanks to the teachings
of the right-handed world,
the lefty becomes ambidextrous:
left arm broken, the right
can perform any task demanded.

Mirror writing is an easy game,
and there’s no need in tennis
for backhand when the racquet
can be passed so deftly to the right.

At odds with the world, the lefty
knows too well the inherent wrongness
of the butter knife, the madness
of the one-spouted ladle, the burden
of double-sided intelligence.

© by Tamara Madison.
Used with the author’s permission