Arete

The forge does not ask permission. Heat arrives, takes the surface, then the depth, until what was hard remembers how to flow. Only in melting do copper and tin find one another. Neither leaves as it entered. What pours from the crucible is neither one, and stronger than both. The mould breaks to release you. Then the hammer. Each blow finds what the casting hid: the buried hollow, the hairline fault. Bronze does not lie to iron. What rings true, rings. What is hollow chatters. The edge was always in the ore. The voice was yours before the fire.