Farrier’s Work
After Gerard Manley Hopkins
I have never held the hammer and tongs,
smacked sparks from orange iron,
in fact it turns out I’m anemic,
not even enough iron in my blood—
so why am I thinking again of Felix Randal
the farrier, battering his horseshoes,
a blacksmith I heard of from another poet
who also couldn’t stop thinking about blacksmiths—
why do I keep returning to this place
where I explain my work to myself:
furnace-glow in the dark, the silence
of rhythm, turning over and over the red sickle
shaping the perfect question mark
*
Conor Gearin is a writer from St. Louis living in Omaha. He’s the managing producer of BirdNote Daily, a daily radio program and podcast. His work has appeared in The Atlantic online, Chariton Review, New Scientist, Mochila Review, MIT Technology Review, and Foliate Oak Literary Magazine.
