a spade a spade

Here it is:
exhibit A.

In greener days,
I would call it
a tool of broad blade,

or yard utensil,
gardeners' arm.
Flipper of soil
for rendering holes.
Implement for cavities.
Grave-maker, shed-waiter,
gnome-smasher, worm-splitter.

Bucket's other half.
A post lost from the fence,
club footed, square-shod.

Can you dig it.
And with it,
I'd make craters,
teeter on rims.
Mannered nouns spin
as meaningless as space;

as blank as my
listener's face.

I used to call it
close as a simile,
a two-faced pun,
metaphor-whore,
latexed, protected,
euphemismed, pseudonymed,
the dirt scraped off
with spit and polish,
with a lick, and a promise -
I called it, I called it.

But just between you
and me, and quietly,
in the trenches
I have made, between
you and me,

I can look the thing
in its blind-glint eye,
and admit my realisation
with a sigh.
An epiphany has played:

it's a spade.