Sometimes a work of art
is just a work of art — lovely
of course, even perhaps fraught
with transcendence — but there are times
when even I hold my breath at what I’ve wrought.
The blue jay is a good example, at least to me;
I blended a loud scrape with a royal robe
and got something more, an elegance
with a voice of arrogant pain. Or the jellyfish
I placed in the southern ocean, the one
that learned on its own how to make clouds
by banding with its billion fellows — never saw that coming,
thought I had the cloud thing knocked without any help
and here comes this simple thing
(not a throwaway exactly but not a strong effort —
more of a sketch really)
and it teaches me how numbers in concert
can do so much more than one simple existence
can muster. Things like that –it makes this
worthwhile, this constant churn in me
to make and make.

When the baby came out shining,
not yet formed but ready to open his eyes
and hold the sky inside him even before he could speak,
I was not surprised — yet. It took years for him
to find the Other that taught him how to make me
visible. I never intended that, of course, but
when it happened — oh, that first moment
when he set down words that turned my pockets
inside out so that everyone could see what I carried
close to me, so that everyone could see the tools and trinkets
with which I adorned this world! He said a little more
and the reeds I thought were already so complete, so simple,
came alive and drew my toil up through their hollow stems
so anyone could suck the marrow of my intent
with a simple recitation — this was it:
the God I always knew lived inside me had stepped out of me.
He was there before me, gentle hands
first making a palace of the stones underfoot,
then framing heaven anew.
I knew at last I’d never been alone,
and all the birds in the sky
and all the creepers on the land, all the trees and wind,
all the flowing monsters
of the sea, all the things I thought I’d made and let go,
were with me, in me, were me.
Here, at last, was the masterpiece
I’d always known was possible.