Dave Bonta's poem takes an ordinary object, the fork, and treats it with mock-grand respect. The speaker imagines forks as the claws of a fierce animal we would rather be related to than the tree-swinging primates we actually come from. Whether in a barn or a garden, the fork's job is blunt: it bites what it can't chew and carries what it can't keep.
The poem then turns on an irony. Forks in roads, creeks and tongues stand for choice and openness, yet the tool we make is rigid and single-minded. The speaker links it with fire, hunger and a devil's prod in some underworld, which gives it a faintly menacing edge. The closing images, "minimal lightning" and "tree gone wrong," are funny and a little unsettling at once.
The mood is playful and wry, with a sly sense of human vanity. The speaker seems fond of the fork, but also aware that our tools reveal our appetites and our wish to look more fearsome than we are.