What can I do
with my 67-year-old
clay?
Restore the wild thing
in
my core?

No. Not precisely.
What my heart desires
is to fix
the five
rusty pitchforks
with no handles
that live in the shed.
and also the mattock
and the heavy garden fork
that predates my marriage,
(that was a presage to our marriage),
and the scythe without a handle
whose slow rust
whispers,
“For the love of God,
please take care of me.”

So I begin to take all
the happy steps.
I straighten the tines.
I grind away the dust.
I watch the YouTubes on creating new handles
from timber on our own property.
I am forced to fix two or three things
before I can fix that one thing
I originally wanted to fix.

You see
I restore many small things.
There is no one tool to restore.
There are many to restore
and each one done restores the core.
But before I give back their use
to new and old hands,
I make a poem
to hold and guide
us
all
in the art of reviving a pitchfork.
They are so useful.