Ode to Forks

Metal claws of the beast we would much rather be descended from — no wimpy swinging in trees, no equivocating opposable tine —

whether pitching hay or turning soil their purpose is the same: to bite what they cannot chew & carry what they cannot keep.

There are forks also in roads, in creeks & in tongues, but for them everything remains open. How ironic then that the man-made fork should epitomize inflexibility: insurrectionary bedfellow of the torch, stoker of digestive fires, guard’s goad in an underworld we hope never to descend to, minimal lightning that we are, tree gone wrong.