I found a hammer on the Cat’s Back,
lodged in tall grass, tektite-strewn dirt
oxidizing its claw in summit haze.
There’s a thought, evidence of the
intractable—a figure in faded linen
drifting from pole
to pole, tool box in hand.
I could become a telephone repairman,
rest between jobs by bell ponds
and calving brume, exist only
as interstitial noise.
I could take this hammer and drive it
through a wet-oak memory of itself
or find its owner’s grave and return it
to his earthen fist. I could use this
hammer to hale clouds from ragged
frames, pull them down, down across
bleak signal lights, down beneath
these insufferable wires, down
into unanswerable peat.
