Dave Bonta takes an ordinary farm tool and treats it with playful, affectionate wonder. The speaker imagines the hand truck as a strange cousin of the wheelbarrow, one that somehow ended up tipped on its head with its nose to the ground, like a worm. He wonders what it could have learned from that creature: perhaps how to let go gracefully, "boneless as hope," and how to take its time.
The poem then turns toward trust. The hand truck tips back "with alacrity," relying on its grips and bearings, and its faith moves refrigerators. Like a rowboat, it makes its user face away from where they're headed, so the poem suggests that blind faith has to be shared to work.
The ending is quiet. After the job, the speaker returns the tool to its place in the barn, next to an old wheelbarrow "on which / so little / now depends." That line seems to nod to a famous poem about a red wheelbarrow. The mood is gentle, humorous, and quietly grateful.