#sampoems

You work at night,

The flames are brighter then,

Looking out for the shimmer of blue,

The smell and the heat and the light.

You work in the shadows,

Out in the liminal spaces,

The smell and the heat and the light,

And the dangerous thrum of magic in the air.

The furnace cracked,

Fruits of your toil birthed from the ashes,

The bloom of iron struck hot and fast before it crumbles back to dust,

Sweat pouring from your brow, blackened soot running in rivulets in its wake.

You won’t be the one they sing songs or tell tales about,

Your work is dirty, and the way you sense the changes by the flames,

It frightens them,

Sigurd slew a dragon, he forged, he did not smelt.

One day you take your wares to the forge,

The hammer lies cold and silent upon the anvil,

Waiting,

You wonder what its weight would feel like in your hands.

The fire is still lit,

Fire you understand,

The shimmering light glints off steel,

The call of the hammer rings loud in your ears.

You take the steel,

Hardened and glinting sharp and deadly, but brittle,

Twisting it together with the iron,

Softer and more yielding.

Neither can work apart,

Steel shatters and iron bends,

And so you work them together,

Striking hot and fast.

You say you are giving it strength,

But that’s not all there is,

There’s beauty here too in the twisted metal,

The bright, shining steel will wend its way around the darkened iron.

And it’s beauty that will grow with time,

And age,

And use,