From the collection And Don’t Come Back, published in 2021.
What Stakes Are We Playing For
Lounging on their hooks in the garage
the rake brags to the snow shovel:
I’ll take your sloppy snowstorm
and raise you a tarp of wet leaves
and slaps down another hand. Plenty of leisure –
Nothing but time! Outside the window
the lawnmower struggles in the late summer heat.
The rake and the snow shovel laugh. How they laugh!
and they deal the cards again.
Unnoticed
the first leaf falls.
10/23/20
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
The rake and snow shovel seem like such unlikeable creatures. You never know about the snow shovel, but I imagine the rake is starting to get busy. 😀 I wonder if ours have seen the skunk that’s been around and sprayed my husband last week.
I have often thought of our tools as having personalities (especially when this or that one malfunctions or else I don’t handle it right and it gets back at me) since I was a child, and it seemed to me that like people, they were influenced by their jobs, or else, a certain kind of personality made sure it got made into a shovel or a broom? Well, you see where my head was at in childhood and it hasn’t changed. As for now, the lawnmower is relaxing, the rake in anxiously awaiting the leaves but also is resentful since we got the blower. And the snow shovel, it just laughs all the time at everyone else, lazy thing.
I tend to think the same way about objects (and my children did too). 😀 I hadn’t thought specifically about tools though.
It happened one day in the garage when I was looking for something or the other and they were all lounging around against the wall (we get lazy and don’t put them back in place).
Oh. . .I can picture that.
I love this idea of competition between the seasonal implements. Our snow plough is definitely the curmudgeon of our bunch.
Every tool has its personality al lright. And even among a category, you know, certain shovels , let’s say, are mild mannered and cooperative and others just fight you. Nothing is straightforward in this world, is it?
We currently own three snow shovels and we fight over who has to endure the one that has what you might regard as a crotchety personality.
Yes, and that one is always the one who endures the longest, never breaks, and is always ready to get out there for the job…