Hammer

Every Wednesday when I went to the shared office

before the class on the comma, etc.,

there was on the desk, among

the notes from students aggrieved and belly-up

and memos about lack of funding

and the quixotic feasibility memos

and labyrinthine parking memos

and quizzes pecked by red ink

and once orange peels,

a claw hammer.

There when I came and there when I left,

it didn’t seem in anyone’s employ.

There was no room left to hang anything.

It already knew how to structure an argument.

It already knew that it was all an illusion

that everything hadn’t blown apart

because of its proximity to oblivion,

having so recently come from oblivion itself.

Its epiphyses were already closed.

It wasn’t my future that was about to break its wrist

or my past that was god knows where.

It looked used a number of times

not entirely appropriately

but its wing was clearly healed.

Down the hall was someone with a glove

instead of a right hand.

A student came by looking for who?

Hard to understand

then hard to do.

I didn’t think much of stealing it,

having so many hammers at home.

There when I came, there when I left.

Ball peen, roofing, framing, sledge, one

so small of probably only ornamental use.

That was one of my gifts,

finding hammers by sides of roads, in snow, inheriting,

one given by a stranger for a jump in the rain.

It cannot be refused, the hammer.

You take the handle, test its balance

then lift it over your head.

Copyright Credit: Dean Young, “Hammer” from Skid. Copyright © 2002 by Dean Young. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press, www.pitt.edu/~press/.

Source: Skid (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002)