A Kind of Psychology

I have made a place for pencils
standing
in a row on the desk
in a drilled board my grandfather used
to keep things close at hand.
they stand
in their usefulness in part
as evidence, of a past.

And today
people laugh at them, together
with what sense of order
I demand of myself,
my objects,
A kind of psychology rages.

I confess
the way of these pencils
in their measured spaces
inviolate, is a way of life
I am bent upon

so long as I am awkward here
with tools and people

I demand space
a house round my feelings
and proper order.