The Glassblower's Hour

He gathers light on the end of a steel rod, a small sun trembling, orange and obedient, and breathes into it the way a name is whispered before it is spoken aloud.

The furnace keeps its old, animal hum. Sweat maps the territories of his back. What he makes will outlive his hands — a vase, a bowl, a thing that holds nothing but the memory of having once been molten.

Watch how the shape pulls against itself, wanting to fall, wanting to rise, caught in the slow argument of cooling. He turns it, turns it, patient as weather, until the air inside agrees to stay.

By dusk the bench is lined with quiet vessels, each one a held breath, faintly singing the high thin note that crystal keeps. He wipes his palms. The fire dims to coals. Tomorrow it will ask again for light.