How to “drain” the fountain in Llano Park.
What to do if you lack time to take the dogs out for a walk.
What do do when you don’t have a stroller. (It is hard to see, but this is a hand truck/dolly).
–John Updike
Tell me, how do the manufacturers of tools
turn a profit? I have used the same clawed hammer
for forty years. The screwdriver misted with rust
once slipped into my young hand, a new householder’s.
Obliviously, tools wait to be used: the pliers,
notched mouth agape like a cartoon shark’s; the wrench
with its jaws on a screw; the plane still sharp enough
to take its fragrant, curling bite; the brace and bit
still fit to chew a hole in pine like a patient thought;
the tape rule, its inches unaltered though I have shrunk;
the carpenter’s angle, still absolutely right though I
have strayed; the wooden bubble level from my father’s
meagre horde. Their stubborn shapes pervade the cellar,
enduring with a thrift that shames our wastrel lives.
Selected Poems
Alfred A. Knopf
http://poems.com/poem.php?date=16714
*What can our tools, innovations, inventions tell us about our lives. Consider using a volta (a sharp turn) as Updike has done in the end of his poem.
