On Making
I held a jackhammer once.
It matched me
in height and weight and I
planned destruction, ripped
everything solid from the ground.
The concrete was my prey,
but it was the tool I fought
to master, its metal body
trembling beneath my hands.
Or, perhaps, its electric heart
was what shook me through
my last held bones.
The concrete, gone,
the rented machinery, returned—
and I wondered if Sisyphus had imagined
a garden where the rock came from.
Rebecca Morgan Frank, "On Making" from The Spokes of Venus. Copyright © 2016 by Rebecca Morgan Frank. Reprinted by permission of Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Source:
The Spokes of Venus
(Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2016)
