The Found Tool

This pencil
found at Tinicum
does it remember
that warm day
or even earlier
when we saw
an old-timer
following a muskrat
along Darby Creek
remembering his hunting
days? Or does
the soft pencil think
only of its cedar town
and the mill that cleaved
it off, the gray graphite
shot into its spine,
or school-bus yellow paint?
So much to think about
laying on the path:
of someone’s knife whittling
the point, and a
lightly used eraser.

John Sevcik