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On The Anvil
From the bed of cracked, gray gumbo*, I snatched the heavy,hand-forged horse shoe like a bald eagle swoops to pluck a rainbow trout from swift waters. Sticky gumbo stole the hoof’s armor when weak clinches sheared as brute shoulders lunged into collars seven decades ago. My grandfather’s teams threw heart into harness at two words. I can see Grandpa’s thick-necked, barrel-chested geldings standing like obedient children as the smithy lays neon-orange bar stock pinched in fire tongs across the anvil horn. | |
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He strikes first the mid-section to bend the toe, turns heel caulks to pierce frozen ground— flakes of hot iron flying to the rhythmic ringing. Over and over he plunges cold, slow-yielding steel into fiery coals. Each blow draws the shoe into perfect shape. New moons ripened to shed silver light on a gumbo flat. Across the ocean Grandpa died on the Chosin Reservoir March, his flagged-draped casket flown home from Korea. The thrown shoe, like a leaf after a hard frost, Darkened, pounded by drought and wildfire, hail and winds that beat the grass and hurled the snow. Now, I place the red-brown shoe with gumbo-packed creases in my home. Things forged on the anvil endure. *A type of clay soil found in Eastern Montana that when moist is heavy and sticky and makes roads impassable. |
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