Ode to an S-Hook
Sep 7th, 2010 | By Taylor Graham | Category: Poetry | 359 viewsA simple bit of hardware.
Iron, hand-worked B
see how the curves aren’t
quite identical,
twin sisters’ smiles.
The tip of each end curled
about itself
like finger touching
thumb to seal a secret.
A blacksmith formed this
implement
of the four elements.
Earth ~ metal
Air ~ the bellows
Fire ~ the forge
Water ~ to temper
heated iron, cool the end-
curl while he hammered
the incandescent rod.
Used for years
and then discarded;
too old and plain
to be cherished;
left in the dark
of a shed subsiding
into the elements
that brought this hook
to its final grace.
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About Taylor Graham: I’m a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. My poems have appeared in American Literary Review, International Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and I’m included in the anthology, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). My book The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006) was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. I’m a finalist in this year’s Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange. |
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I really enjoyed the way you gave “life” to an inanimate object, especially the feel of the elements, and the quiet oblivion of “subsiding into the elements/that brought this hook/to its final grace.”