Hammering Spring

BY Jim Daniels

This morning after breakfast,
in the voice of a busy carpenter
or a wizard in search of a wand,
my daughter asks to borrow a hammer.

My what for goes vaguely unanswered,
my shrug taken as yes. She grabs it
from the toolbox, her thin arm yanked
down by the weight.

She pulls leaves off bushes, piles them
on the stump of our old cherry tree,
and hammers them on a piece of paper
according to a system established
by ancient astronomers
or insane mathematicians.

Later, I find the paper on my desk
patterned with lush powdered green.
Tomorrow she may invent the wheel.
Today I gently rub the dust of my bones.

 

Biography

JIM DANIELS‘ most recent books include Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies, winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize (Eastern Washington University Press); Mr. Pleasant, a collection of fiction, (Michigan State University Press); and In Line for the Exterminator (Wayne State University Press), all published in 2007. From Milltown to Malltown, a collaboration with the photographer Charlee Brodsky and fiction writer Jane McCafferty, will be published by Marick Press in 2010, and Having a Little Talk with Capital P Poetry, his next book of poems, will be published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2011. He is the Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.

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