The Forge Goes Quiet

The day burns down to iron.

I lift the bar from the throat of the hearth

and carry the small comet to the anvil—

a red thought cooling as it travels.

✧ ✧

Hammer says what it always says:

Once, twice, a bright litany of blows.

Each strike erases what the last one meant.

Until the shape agrees to be itself.

✧ ✧

Steam rises at the quench like a brief ghost,

all hiss and vanishing. The water keeps the secret

of a heat it never wore. The room breathes out:

Tongs on the hook, hammer at rest, leather stiffening.

✧ ✧

This is how endings happen here—

not with grief, but with gravity:

a final check for true lines, a palm to the steel

that no longer flinches from touch.

✧ ✧

The color leaves the metal without drama,

passing through orange to memory.

I sweep the scale into a black little drift.

A weather of shed skins.

✧ ✧

When I kill the fire, it doesn’t die—

It returns to its dark among coals,

like a story closing its mouth

So the finished thing can speak.