Dave Bonta takes an ordinary object, a magnetic screwdriver, and treats it with playful, mock-serious attention. The poem begins with a joke of logic: if the end that screws is the head, the other end must be the tail. From there the tool becomes a creature, its shaft trapped in yellow plastic "like an insect in amber," and then a fossil, a "relic from the Mesozoic" now that power drills have taken over its job.
The speaker seems fond of the screwdriver, and a little amused by his own fondness. The humor in "solve for x" puns on the X-shaped tip, but the images then grow larger and stranger. The tip enters the screw "like a spirit / into someone possessed," and spins like a "whirlwind / in a desert of wood." The last line, with its slight lean toward magnetic north, ends on quiet wonder. The mood is light, curious, and gently reverent, as if a forgotten tool deserved a place among grander things.