ALL THE RIGHT TOOLS

2 1 R A L L T H E R I G H T T O O L S J A M E S R I C H A R D S O N It is aggravating to have to stop writing to fix things. We hope these tools will get you back to the important work faster. – Inscription in a toolbox, a gift from my parents, 1973 That good slow tool the sun, with a trumpeter’s strict breath, swells hemispheres of fruits to scarlet or dusk or amber imperceptibly, not breaking one. That good slow tool the moon pulls the quiet wide-eyed face of the ocean to its face, not a drop through its long fingers slipping down. That good slow tool that turns trees and lives to wreckage brilliant and strange, that train so smooth and slow we hardly know we’re on is Time, but is there one slower still that would reverse these words and call your breaths and all your strayed thoughts home to be you, standing again? ...