Sculpted

 Sculpted

Like the present absence of a shadow, 

Or a trace fossil shaped by its loss

I see you as I see myself-

As nothing more than what we are not. 

We rust and we rot and we watch it all-

From the tar-dipped smile to the tarnished soul.

Yet we are maligned 

When we are wrongly defined 

By each decaying day.

It’s true I’ve lost something. 

But so has a sculpture. 

And I forget that I, too, though unfinished, 

Am chiseled and changed. 

Fissured, yes, and already chipped. 

Yet I am not what I was or what I will be. 

Why then do I see in me and around me 

The cliffs of coarsened rock, 

Weather-whitled, bone-cracked by waves and

Scarred by slowly shifting seas?

This, too, is stone to be sculpted. 

We are not what we were, 

Or what we could be. 

And yet we could still unearth 

What we were before birth;

The image in the Sculptor’s eyes.