I’m told that once
I was a nugget,
hard, small, and spare.
Hard to say if I’d been
made that way
or ground down
from a larger stone.
I had no surface area.
I had no depth. If I’d
been hammered open, I bet
I would have looked the same
all the way through.
At least,
that’s what they tell me;
I can say for certain that
however I was first made, later on
I was indeed hammered open,
tossed into forge
level heat, plucked and
tossed into a quench
that shaped me, charged me,
changed me into
this, or so I tell myself: this
multi-hued, burned-in
iridescence; these fractures
smooth and gritty; these
materials as tough and complex
as I once was simple.
Or so I say when asked
to avoid thinking
that after all,
all I am is still
a nugget that’s been
hammered open.
Maybe all I am
is a broken nugget
and not one of great interest, but
instead just a smaller piece
of something as ordinary as dirt.