Smithing

Passion and Life, cooled,
Distends like icycles
Reaching for the earth,
Reaching downward but thinning,
Puttering out in the outward inertia while
Descending back by the force of gravity;

Warm air, cool air, the vacuum--
It's all quite easy science, the
Inward descending, freezing up
In the atmosphere in some odd shape.

Well, but you shall become a butterfly someday;
Well, but you'll become some flowery spark,
With some titillating story to tell us,
Wonderful.

But at this one moment,
Culled -- sharp and brittle as some ice shard --
Curled over, cold, cooling to some strange shape,
I doubt butterfly or spark
But still have all intention and faith
In the steel, the anvil, the Maker.


-r