Paddle your own Canoe

If my backyard reeks

of onion and cow dung manure,
And my coal pot remains black
days and days without end,
Who are you to point it out to me?
My critic, I say; paddle your own canoe

Why do you never stop looking?
Never stop having opinions?
Never stop being right?
Always eternally correct?
Just paddle your own canoe, please paddle on

When I was young
my nose was a good foot long
My mother chopped it with a meat knife,
Putting me in a long wooden canoe, out in the open sea
She handed me the cut nose
and said; “now go on……….paddle your own canoe”