From the hogan, a light beams into the dark under the blue sky of
dawn. Old men speak through my grandfather now, weld my words.

A rupture spills from a welding rod onto a mirror-polished pipe. The
riversun wakes, becomes sentences. All around, the smoke is a sunrise I
stand in. Through a dark lens, in the blinding sheet, I see the sunripple
form a stitch. Knuckles rein this silent light, the cranking current. I
hold a coil that fluctuates in the armature of the welding machine.

Over and over, the metal floats, joined forever by thought. My biceps
rooted, grounded, beyond the dally of instinct. This continuous lock
brightens in the mind, then sifts to the slow rush of fame. A burst plaits
the metal. A word becomes a story in that rod.

In my mind’s hand, these currents melt a straight line, snowfakes in
headlights.
I open my fingers to recognize, again, the face of welding. I write as I
weld.

Still, I sit to the sun. I breathe word voices in the disturbance, what is
not understood. Why am I drawn to this? Should I forget that words
are also a migration? Maybe it’s one more explanation, one more
conversation my grandfather asked me to interpret. Would it then
bend with blue skies, open to the dark and see that this is how it is to
build, to trust words, to exist in words?

Remember I sat here one fall day.