The Shovel

It’s quite a thing to lay a life to rest, to place rocks over roots rotten with age, cover leaves once green with soil, sodden from rain. Conceived in the meeting of metal and wood, born a size from which never to grow; used to move seeds, heave grass and then stone, but trapped in the molasses of time, never carrying oats of my own. It is quite something though to be grabbed by a child, palmed by summer sweat, and then chosen again by that same hand as a man - to see your farmhand’s wrinkles in your own creaking frame. Man, beast, or object, we all age the same. I’ve lugged more than my weight, cracked near ruin and wrack, then just tied together with twine to dig holes! his summer son giggling on his back. I’ve been thrown, stamped, battered; called all manner of names. Left to freeze in snow by this fence, kept warm in that shed, replaced briefly by plastic but found again, under dust and cobweb. It’s quite a thing indeed to rust and be painted, to dry out and then see as this tool of a family, the generational uses of me.