Hardware

 

Before software, freeware, shareware, thisware

and thatware, there was hardware — actual stuff.

Before cities, even before words, there

was always hardware — we were born to love

the things that pound and grab and pierce and cut

and work our will upon the world. Before

this brightly lit business of gleaming steel

hammers and bins full of nails — this emporium

of purpose, shrine to the facts of real

physical existence — there must have been

a cave, hidden, close guarded, filled with hides,

bones, flints, feathers, sinews, sticks. Was that when

my father wanted me to watch him take

the things we needed, showed me how to make?

 

 

© Michael Fleming

Brattleboro, Vermont

March 2015

 

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