Swords. Plowshares. Snowblowers.

As I hurled mounds of snow from the drive yesterday at dusk, and hacked at the small glacier near the gutter of the street, I noticed some glares of derision from the neighboring humans.

Each man stood behind a gasoline engine on wheels, tossing fountains of powder through the air like something from an Esther Williams movie.

I wondered, momentarally, if, when clearing paths through a foot of snow, creatures like me are not supposed to bleed. I've broken pickaxes on ice, and shattered spade handles. I've left red marks in the snow from ragged ice on flesh and salted the walks with sweat.

I use silly things, like axes to split wood, and sickles and scythes to cut grass. This is not a statement I make, not an offense I intend (because you can feel the offenses I intend. For days.)

Yet, I'm not like these humans with their wheeled, snow-eating wolves. I thought it maybe had to do with growing up on a farm, but I seem to recall that my household was outstripped technologically by most rural folks, too.

I think, if there is a right or wrong to be had in all of this, I may be in the right, for once. Sometimes, the best things are the hardest to understand and quite difficult to explain.

Sometimes, like love against the odds, the right thing can't be looked up in a book.

But it has something to do with this axe or that shovel. It has something to do with the notion of pounding a plowshare into a sword being more than a metaphor. How can the man who no longer holds a spear feel the joy of turning it into a pruning hook?

So here's a reminder: pick up a hammer and hit something.