Spoon River Anthology?

Question

What is the symbolism of the ax in the poem?? its driving me CRAZYY!!!! (last line)

Franklin Jones

IF I could have lived another year
I could have finished my flying machine,
And become rich and famous.
Hence it is fitting the workman
Who tried to chisel a dove for me
Made it look more like a chicken.
For what is it all but being hatched,
And running about the yard,
To the day of the block?
Save that a man has an angel's brain,
And sees the ax from the first!

Answer 1

In the end we all die.At least that is what I got out of the poem.

Answer 2

It could represent the idea that each of us knows that our death is inevitable.