A Shovel

Just give me one thing:
A double-aught shovel,
as sophisticated as Roy Clark in a Calvin Klein ad
pickin' and grinnin' his way across the bare-blazing belly-buttons
of the anorexic too-cool-to-smile fashion toothpicks.
A shovel so fine I can feed the world
like a giant spoon scooping grain into the mouth of global consumerism.
Eat your vegetables you little complainer.

A shovel:
The kind those hat wearing line-dancers on The Nashville Network scowl at.
Garth Brooks wannabes, whining,
"A cowboy doesn't shovel dirt. I stay on my horse."
Stay on your horse then, singing your "git along little dogie" ditties.
I'll be doing the work and, hey,
do you think I believe Charlie Goodnight and Bill Picket sang sing-alongs
around the campfire while they pulled sand-burs off of their
saddle-sore buttockses?

A double-aught, heat tempered, made in the USA shovel:
Balanced so perfect I can throw it forty yards and sink its blade into a
sod-covered ditch-bank;
carry it along swinging it with the same intimacy as a drill-sergeant has for
his rifle and for his gun.
Not like one of your cheapo made-by-a-ten-cents-an-hour-third-world- nation-labor-force-multinational-corporation-shovel shovels.
Those two for ten-dollar backyard gardener shovels,
struggling against your grip as its screw-you angled blade fights for
dominance against your will.

A double-aught shovel like a halberd in the hands of a foot soldier peasant
cursing the knights in shining armor riding their
class-conscious quarter horses.
Tell me to choose my weapon.
I choose a double-aught, heat tempered, made in the USA shovel
heavy enough to work with and light enough to dance with;
moving with you like part of your arm, body, heart and soul shovel.

A double-aught shovel
tempered like a bell
ringing in the hands of a Protestant heretic
Augustinian monk, shouting,
"The priesthood is for everyone.
We are all priests of God.
God is not just speaking to the knights and the lords
and the bishops and the pope.
God is in the dirt in the cracks of the hands
of the worker
holding a double-aught, heat tempered,
made in the USA
shovel.