Bolton Landing

Michael Armstrong

for David Smith

Your cigarette smouldering down
A burning scroll wedged tight
Between those weathered fingers
Wounded and dark

The anvil warm, its ring
Forever in your ears
A constant reminder of why
You live, it sings

Your love is a reflection of light
Across the face of a hard mistress
Born of the earth, furnace formed
Made divine

Prometheus in work clothes firing a
Baptism at the blacksmith's forge
Illumination of the snow, flatcar dream
The welder's arc, your magnetic north

In the fields of May you stopped to
Rest

The 2River View, 2_2 (Winter 1998)