Leonore Wilson
Forge
Forge Marriage has its corresponding instruments
To those slung up by leather strops or
Propped against a jamb of weathered wood beam.
How we walk around the dangerous symbols
Of anvil, pitchfork, shovel; iron, metal.
One hard breath could mean the fantail
Of a million sparks, a stampede, a shattering
Enough to take the years to task, thus
Some may say our happiness is choreographed.
We are rigged as man and wife, a bag
Of knives; we don't publish feeling;
Grief and hunger are rarely spoken, held inside
Like those tool stalactites paralyzed precariously
At an angle; and so day in day out we move
Predictable, head bobbing, forgetting what we're able.