The Meadow Literary and Art Journal 2011

The Hammers by David Shattuck If after you read this, the snow still squats in low places of the field, in the shadows at the wood’s edge, then maybe winter is a lion eating its young. I mean to say I am hammering out a pretext for war. I should start over. If after the snow falls, then the sunlight, then the bare shoulders of the neighbor’s eldest girl, seek evidence of Spring in the fields. I mean to say all the young men leave for other continents. The snow doesn’t catch on. I’m hammering out the details. You will read this and remember how we loved each other and the soldiering life. How the snow falls in mountains without names. How, after all of this, our fathers would wait in their long coats for our return: we hammers of fortune, we lost, we bloodied, at last come home. 72 theMeadow

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