To loose the marble spell

Gaze at the marble block

see the grain that marks the cut

The tools of the sculptor

are in the hands

Strike a bold plan.

The shape therein

a brief moment is seen

Only to be lost in the flurry

of creation

As the chisels ordered precision

wedge-shapes the pale virgin.

Pieces in life fly away

splintered bits, the stuff of dreams

Cuts in draft but never finished

Surveyor’s chains abandoned

in valleys scarred.

Somehow the block survives

and the shape therein,

though there seems to be

a lost momentum

in the carvers hand.

And always the pattern unfolds

to weary the dreamer

Who finds his dreams

auguries to predictions

of relentless natural laws.

But wait,

a niche

a scratch out of pattern

and unknown

not discovered by perspectives’ eye.

To build a life from this

To create a turning

without warning

An errant touch of the

chisel

Sends hurling a maximum-path

for the dreamer.

To take this path

as dream dissolves into reality

To cast this mold

on the shape therein

To vision and encourage

to serve the craft well

is to master the age and art

and loose the marble spell.