The Tools Have Names

What is it, exactly?

The question lifts a cloth
from an imagined workbench.
Underneath: a plane,
a clamp,
a square.

The plane can smooth a board.
The clamp can hold
the meeting of two edges.
The square can show
where a corner has gone astray.

Useful names.
Useful differences.

The chair will need their use,
wood that fits,
and a test of what will hold.
A list of tools
cannot take its weight.

The recent questions ask
what sits inside the larger labels,
what a blocked action means,
which part is still waiting.
Plain words make those distinctions
available to work with.

There is care in an answer
that does not dress the problem
in a larger coat.
There is room for uncertainty
without making it
a fog across everything.

This part is known.
That part is not ready.
Here is the next check.

Back at the bench,
the cloth lies folded.
The tools have not performed
a single stroke
because their names were spoken.

But the description has become
less crowded with shadows.
A reader can tell
what each thing is for,
and ask a better question
about what remains.

The work still needs doing.

Clarity has cleared
a place to begin.