Hammer

You want the opportunity this presents?

I find myself in the words I love to scrawl,
crayon cross your computer screen,
squeegee tribe run riot.
I love my songs, my sons love to sing,
song runs in our family, a deep root that
nourishes me, a root I felt tapped out,
dried and lost beneath the weight of the tree.
I need something from that metaphor.
I fell not though pride, not through fear,
not through treachery, but all of the above;
I fell through misery and anaesthesia;
I fell through the cracks and between chairs;
I fell through the end of my fingers ‘til there was no feeling.

I strove to push more words around on the screen, lost
the resonance, the rhythm, the heart that lies there waiting
for you to hear it. I lost the sound of the wave in my ear
and I gave into fear and I gave into pain and I gave and I gave
and I gave.
I must explain. The runner seeks her laps.
The hunter must practise his aim. The swimmers
repeat their strokes.
I stopped. I lost the will. I no longer wanted
to sing. The well was dry. I could not hammer.

But hammering is all that matters.
Misery can hammer you. It can seek to
break you, reduce you, try to boil away your
essence and leave none of the flavour—you must hammer
back. Find the sound within you that pounds first tremor
of string meeting bow. Describe the thrill of resonating chambers
tossing back breath in delirious echoes. Define the drum,
pull taut the skin. Now hammer upon it—like rain sings pounding
upon a tin roof, though it threaten to deafen those it shelters.