Blacksmith

A yawn so wide and so much it hurts
Too much for a throat to swallow
I have been all or none, gape or shut,
Brooding in the dark corners of the deepest rooms
Or baring so much it rips the corners,
The dark, the yawn
Of a tragically self-reliant soul
An iron slab sundered and warped inward
Under past absolute melting points and the lip-cracking kiln
Until he now, stabilised, lives out the daily liturgy:
The eternally terminal inward curve
Or bites off parts unprofitably in protest, shatters outward, flailing in all angles.

Enter the Blacksmith, who is not I nor a sheer act of mine:
I would be cold statue or lit gunpowder,
Unstable, instant arrival at one, gape or freeze,
But it seems she will linger and arrive again gingerly at the city limits,
Hair clippings perhaps shedding, mystery, her giggling,
All that is mine gladly slid to the floor,
Her drifting back into the eyes' horizons,
Reaching to hold hands with the woad war-paint man
With his hasty fuse madly lit over the gunpowder that is a moment;
She defuses him with her hands' warmth
And her laugh
And the lesson of her moment.

Please, tell me more; teach me more;
Iron art slowly warms;
I am beginning to tarry.



-r