The god Hephaestus had it, too.
A yoke. A plow. A word
for punishment in public:
pillory. From Kyphon,
meaning bent or crooked.
I greet the diagnosis
with a recognition that’s bone
deep. What twisted me,
what cause has hurt so long,
I hunch and barely notice it at all?
The surgeon’s neat hands
demonstrate deformed
and fractured vertebrae.
His explanation’s clean
and straight. He’s not inclined
to metaphor. To work
under a weight— to show
your nature in your shape:
an ox, a crippled welder
of helmets and shields.
The lame one, the halting one,
maker of objects that can speak
to what’s unfixable, hunch-backed
above the mouth of the forge.