Things

There's no way around it. Our bodies are just a bunch of stuff. Normally, when you're feeling fine and nothing hurts, you can forget about the matter of your matter. But just whack your thumb with a hammer, and suddenly you're all too aware of this nub of flesh that knocks against everything.

When Jeffers does use figurative language, it's to show how different a live, healthy being is from a hurt one. He does this by objectifying various parts of that body. Check it out:

• Line 1: The image of the broken pillar is both classically Roman and totally wrecked. Jeffers lets us know that this hawk once was an elegant specimen, but now his broken bone is jutting out.
• Line 2: This simile does double duty. We get a physical description of how slack and loose the wing is, but we also see it as maybe a white flag of surrender.
• Lines 27-28: When the hawk of the second stanza finally meets his maker the "fierce rush" is said to become unsheathed from reality." In other words, the hawk is shedding the thinginess of its own matter. Its soul is freed from its body—a sword freed to do its sharp business, leaving the broken body behind. And good riddance.