The Lost Spanner

Hurtling down into the ultimate darkness where things become what they are--the darkness under our beds--from the tall construction scaffolding of my sleep, a lost spanner.

You know the type: the word “Craftsman” or “Stanley” in fire-hammered letters on the drop-forged handle. Worm gear adjustment on the chrome-alloy cheek to ease or tighten the lower jaw of the tool around the nut of a resistant idea or irresolute thought. Like an opposable thumb, or a flexible earlobe to lock around and secure the meaning of a passing comment. "Tools were made, and born were hands." Every farmer understands.

I breathed lightly and turned onto my left side. My right hand and forearm dangled over the edge of the bed. Around the piers and pilings of my bed sheer nothing surged and foamed.

In the darkness where things become what they are a lost spanner, hurtling down onto helpless heads and eggshell fetus skulls of language still unborn, became a sidereal hand articulated by a celestial arm to a sleeping mountain–my shoulder. I haled this fresh-minted mountain arm out of the sea like dripping nets and folded it away, still dripping with starlight and holding something in its starfish palm, under my right side, returning to sleep.