Rumor of Tools

rumors abound
about a tool
buried in our yard

they say it’s rickety 
straw man bone
worn good, from its time on 
either side of ground

sweat-dipped tenants put their 
stories on it
into its wood grips
and in its metal fork-wave mouth

they all talked to themselves as they worked
and all that talking over this tool
couldn’t but unsettle the steel

I'm out there often
my ear to the grass,
a believer in the echo, I’ve 
become the lunatic
in search of 
a thing to push up and down the yard 

to move earth,
or to move things on earth

the land must have a defense for my digging
a molecule cascade
to secure reprieve 
from inquisitions by the unvocationed

my ragged edges tire
on the pit ledge
stared into my thousandth cave
sinking the neighborhood with my shovel,
in search of some buried plow