Returns
I opened the door to the blacksmith
shop with care
since the hinges, pock-marked and
encrusted
with rust, were almost more than
the frame could bear.
There was no floor. I walked on
dust instead.
Tools turning to dust were everywhere
scattered through my
great-grandfather's shed.
Horseshoes, the pincers that held
them in the fire,
then laid them on the anvil,
glowing red,
had now cooled together a hundred
years.
A hammer rested on its cylindrical
head,
long wooden handle projecting in
the air,
waiting, still propped against the
anvil's side,
to be lifted by the hand that
dropped it there,
the hand that worked the bellows,
now long decayed.
I pumped it and the ashes
scarcely stirred.
Hearing the rustle of leaves, I turned my head.
At my back, in the half-open door,
the sunlight edged
between the darkness here and the
brightness there,
like the blacksmith's face, peering
from the dead
at the shadows left behind - his
works, his heir.
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