Welding With Jonah

When I spend the weekend welding with my son,
who has entered into his beautiful teenaged amperage,
we weld with evolutionary electrodes, fire and fuel
fusing our bonds,
pushing the molten lines of metallic love
into the spaces between the strongest of steel.

The slag and flux of life has no magnetic power
in this heat that still burns brightly in the forge
of the life that brings us together.

Sparks fly like comets all around us,
landing randomly in the noise of a shop of strangers.

My grandfather's Norwegian shadow
coils like smoke around our heads, laughing.
There's no joy like watching the shining seam
hold tight as the quenching solution steams.