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Spring 1989 • Vol. XI No. 2 • Poetry |

A Hardware Store as Proof of the Existence of God

I praise the brightness of hammers pointing east
like the steel woodpeckers of the future,
and dozens of hinges opening brass wings,
and six new rakes shyly fanning their toes,
and bins of hooks glittering into bees,

and a rack of wrenches like the long bones of horses,
and mailboxes sowing rows of silver chapels,
and a company of plungers waiting for God
to claim their thin legs in their big shoes
and put them on and walk away laughing.

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Nancy Willard was the author of eleven books of poetry and two novels, Things Invisible to See and Sister Water. Her many books for children include A Visit to William Blake's Inn, which won the Newbery Medal and a Caldecott Honor.

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My father rode his horses with the kind of authority the Spanish assumed in new worlds. Family stories told how he broke every childhood bone riding “those damned things.” He […]

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