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.