There is a hammer lying on the floor of my bedroom.
I want to pick it up, but I don't pick it up because
this would be a digression.

If I pick up the hammer,
it will leave an impression, hammershaped, in the rug because
it is heavy and has lain there all night.
It will look as if the hammer is still there
even after I have walked out of the room and put it
away in the toolbox.

The carpet will not let go of its hammershape; it is not grass
that will gradually lift itself after a night of heavy sleep.
It will only stand up if I run my fingers through the fibers
or vacuum. And if I vacuum, I will not stop
with the footsquare shape of hammer, but will run through the house
vacuuming carpets and no one will remember
there was a hammer.

Last night I brought the hammer into the bedroom
to unstick the window swollen with winter
because I was beginning to suffocate as the barometer dropped
toward rain.

Even now, though I am in the kitchen, and it is raining at last,
I am thinking about the hammer and what it is doing alone 
in the bedroom pressing carpet fibers to the floor.
It presses silently and does not move in any direction
except down. It does not inch toward home but plows
through my thoughts with the claw end made for prying
and getting things unstuck

and what will I discover inside but another toolbox
full of anxious hardware—the screwdrivers, the pliers and wire cutters
and an empty space at the back
for the hammer.