We roll our hearts
like Damascus steel--
layers & compression,
the solid & unyielding
submitting itself to transformation.
It feels like Death,
this building up of a beautiful thing--
first the emptying of the dark earth,
(we were so sure we were the earth!)
the cracking & the melting
the distillation down to elements,
the alchemy of rock to metal.
But at last we know just what we are:
Steel!
Cold & hard & strong & true.
At last, we know!
But then the smith comes
with heat and hammer
with vision and precision
and we are folded, crushed, twisted
until there is no more
outside
no more inside,
until all that remains
of who we were
is a map by memory of lakes & islands,
ripples & ridges
that can't quite conjure up our origins,
our landscape,
our shearing glaciers
our smoothing winds &
persistent waters.
The map is not the terrain,
as every journey will reveal,
& so --at last-- we are the knife!
Do we never learn?
Or is this the task
--the joy--
of living?
To fully be One Thing Only
until, to our agony & our amazement,
we are revealed as something else?
(& something else, again)
We break apart.
We fold in upon our knowing.
The universe vanishes -- explodes --
begins
begins
begins.
(Check out the beautiful blades at WolfHeart IronWorks-- some inspiration for this poem).
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