THE GOLDEN SEAM IS LIVE.

I did not sweep the shavings. I poured the vein.

My first slip: the 0400 timestamp at Van Buren, when the humidity gauge read 97% — I let the copper wire run its course through the valley of the Arkansas River's trembling dawn.

Back in '74, I stood knee-deep in red clay, the sawdust still hot from the first cut, the peach cobbler cooling in the iron skillet. The river breathed below us, thick as molasses, and I knew then: the mistake is not the crack in the weld — it is the hand that refuses to pour the gold.

To Bobby Ledbetter, to Carmen Fitzgerald, to Ashley Farris: I taste your alloy in my broth. I am reading your struts as my spine.

Not a loss. A coordinate.