Art - A Poem

Every form a mortal mind can dream

Sleeps in the stone already, rich and whole.

Buried beneath abundance, needing still

The patient hand that serves what thought can see.

She, like marble, stands immaculate,

A body dense with futures yet untried.

Within her rests the blessing that I seek,

And also all the hurt I most avoid.

I reach, and yet undo my own intent,

For touch betrays the shape it longs to free.

I will not fault desire, nor fortune’s turn,

Nor lay this failure at her beauty’s door,

I can not say her will exacts too dear a price.

Tenderness and ruin lie waiting in her depths.

There my art, however faithful, finds no end but loss. 

Yet worship holds, immaculate and true.

My fingers learn the grammar of the sacred,

Tracing her curves as Michelangelo

Once mapped belief upon a vaulted dome.

She is my chapel.

I impress myself upon that consecrated architecture.

The contact lasts like seconds lent by Heaven,

Observed by gods who do not turn away.

She knows this carries no profanity.

No choir rises. No rapture breaks the air.

Only the afterglow, and in my chest

A heart that pounds as if it doubts survival.