The first tool we want from our fathers toolboxes is the hammer
It is a tool of youth, young men bashing the world to shape
We learn first to strike and smash, and then to drive nails
Leaving dents and spikes in everything, and then more occasionally building
Rambling leaning furniture, haphazard sculptures of adolescence
our work shows perhaps talent, but always enthusiasm
blemished with the touch of too much, too fast
Ragged cuts and the clinched nails of inexperience, poorly placed
and at the last turned back and driven over, where some hold fast forever
because boundless energy and small pay can earn anything, but enough time
Some of us never survive their days as inchoate men
and those who do, coming to a quieter place of ourselves
with fuller choice of tools, are held fascinated in sudden moments
by a hammer, and memory of singular approaches to the world
In those moments the wind, even in still rooms, dances our hair
and whispers the names of those we've known who will always be young
