Forgetfulness.

Blacksmiths are supposed to be the archetype of multitasking – you’ve heard the expression, used in the poem below, “plenty of irons in the fire”? Supposedly, you tend different pieces that are heating up, so you can increase productivity. This hasn’t always been the case for me, and this poem explores the duality between being a smith, and having ADHD.

Forgetfulness

Spang…!
Ah. The jaws of this vice,
(Older than I am, and oh so gnarled and speckled with spatter),
Have never been square.

Let me tighten them more,
Bearing down with my whole (and not-insignificant) weight,
To hold you steady. Sturdy. Stable.

Don’t. Forget. There’s a knife in the vice.

In Rouen, I saw a vice with hands as jaws,
You’d have liked to be held by them.

Carved and chiselled from iron! Iron-hewer. Eisenhower.
Where did I put my good file?
Swiss powder steel. Swiss cheese. Swiss rolls. Swiss sabres.

Don’t. Forget. There’s a knife in the vice.

Screech. Scrape. Scraunch,
Iron sharpens iron,
And a waterfall of particles adds to the little mountain of powder at the foot of my workbench.
Tossed into the fire, they cascade upwards as a thousand fairy-sparks,
A phrase I once heard from the world’s angriest man.

“Plenty of irons in the fire”,
You’re supposed to be able to multitask.

Ah.

Well, I suppose I can bleed at the same time as working.

I forgot.