Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Hammer and Nails

When I was a child

I would hold the nails in place

while my father hammered away.

At the age of eight,

I finally got to wield the hammer

for the first time

and from that point on

my days of holding nails

were over.

I now possessed a simple wisdom

that every tyrant in human history

has come to know:

It is always better

to be the hammer.

The Antigonish Review. Antigonish, NS. No. 157 (Spring 2009). p. 62.