Jawbone

The line is a wire that cuts the blue sky.

The wood is gray-green and swollen with rain,

and when I press down, the spring is a ghost

of a sound, a high, metallic grit.

It splinters. A tooth of cedar

falls into the grass.

I pin the shirt anyway,

watching the wood sink its dry mouth

into the heavy, dripping hem.

Two small indents where the world

tried to hold on.