JVD

Bolts, rope, shoes, chain, harness, scythes, wrenches, nuts,
gas cans,

all accumulate as having, or having had, some
end or purpose, now half forgotten yet too remembered

if you put your mind to it.

What they’ve got in common is the hand they’re shaped for
that used them, or was meant to.

Lay them down, pick them up, they fit, they belong ,
Sometimes too well. Why should a shot gun, a pistol fit so
well?

Curious to call them hand made, you could as well have said
machined, meaning the same thing.

There’s a kind of beauty to them, or was. Less so now. Compare
Racing vessels with those made fifty years ago. Compare a modern
ship with the “Titanic.” We have yachts with strangely figured
ugly shapes that go now like lightning, but who cares, who cares?

They say naval power was measured by shell
size in 1910. After that it was all the explosion.
A captain hardly knew what power he had
beneath his deck. It had become invisible.

We’ve lost something. What have we lost? What
We held or what held us? What we hold may work, but
It doesn’t touch us any more. We don’t look at it except
when we take it, packed in cardboard, out of its box.

Just then a girl came into view at the edge of a field
where a fence ran, or once had run, by a brook. “I’ve
lost something,” I said, “but I don’t know what it is.”

She look at me. “It’s the earth,” she said, “you’ve lost the earth.”

“Can I get it back?”

“Put down your hand and you’ll find it.”