BPR 50 | 2023
The right subject for long study,
this thirty-inch, fourteen-pounder:
curved end called the swan’s neck,
angular other end a chisel,
intermediate long shank
between them hexagonal and holy.
Black like the brilliant raven.
Beautiful magnifier of muscle,
the magnitude of its leverage
and loosening, prise bar basher,
hooker of and hanger-on of all
that hooked and hung upon might be.
Shakespeare called it an iron crow.
But it’s the dog hit by a car
that comes back to me every time
my hand or eye lights on one.
The seven of us watched
from the flatbed deck while Lucy Doolin
took the bar from the tool rack
and put the screaming dog down
with a single blow then lifted gently
its body into the bed with us.
This was our summer job,
a trip a day to the dump with litter.
Lucy snuffed a cigarette in a ribbon
of blood, lit another, and hung the crowbar
back on the rack. He might have looked
at us then, but either we were all
or only I was looking at the dog.
Then Lucy spoke to the air wherever
we were: choice, he said, the will
of God or whatever, but also the tool
at hand, the right tool for the job.