My Father the Blacksmith (a 2010 poem)

Quick study break: A friend asked me to dig up this poem I wrote in November 2010. (Not my absolute favorite, but it made quite the impression as a child.) Almost a decade ago, wow!

My Father the Blacksmith — by Silvie Lundgren

There he stood in front of his work
With his mallet and hammer,
And he swung one arm up
And then the other.
“Clang!-Clang!”
He worked on the metal day and night.


And on the bottom step of my cottage stairwell
I would stand and watch him,
And watch him,
I would watch him day and night,
Working with all his might.

And then one day,
When I went down
To the bottom step of my cottage stairwell,
I heard no “Clang!-Clang!”
Of the mallet and the hammer
(Going up in one hand,
And then the other).

The only sound to be heard
Was the moving of the water wheel.
“Whoosh!-Whoosh!”
And then I looked around the corner,
And what I saw I could not believe.

There lay my father The Blacksmith,
On the ground,
Mallet and hammer on the table still.
But there on the floor my father lay,
Never to swing the mallet and hammer
(One arm up
And then the other)
Again.

And then I knew
That I could never stand
On the bottom step of my cottage stairwell
And watch my father
The Blacksmith
Swing his mallet and hammer
Ever again.

“Clang!-Clang!-Clang!-Clang!”

And then the next day,
My father was buried.
Deep, deep under the ground,
To lie still and rest forever.

And I fell to tears in my mother’s lap,
For my father The Blacksmith
I could see no more.

And now,
All I remember:
The sound of digging up gravel
And laying my father — The Blacksmith — down.

______

[Original written November 2nd, 2010. Underwent modification exactly 3 years later for school.]

#poetry

#creativity
#AlsoIAmAutistic #NormalizeAutism

🧡

My real-life father is alive and well.