The Angel Inside
Coral life forms in copious swarms
feast in the Cambrian chyme,
dividing their cells and forming their shells
to end on the seafloor as lime.
Tectonic churning and magma upturning
renders marble whiter than bone.
The marble is mined, but the cutters are blind
to the angel confined in the stone.
A young sculptor arose, with a bend in his nose
and a transcendent creative spark,
charged with ambition to fulfill a commission,
an angel for St. Dominic's Ark.
An artist sublime who will live for all time,
his genius is to see things not shown.
For an angel to achieve he first has to perceive
its splendor enclosed in the stone.
At dawning's first glow he surveys the tableau
of the blocks the stone cutters supplied.
In some he sees dreams of potential themes,
but only one holds an angel inside.
“A beautiful thing never gives so much pain
as does failing to hear it and see it.”
The block that he chose was rejected by those
who then lied and claimed to foresee it.
With talent and skill he falls to with a will,
surrounded by rubble and relic.
His method you see, for the angel to free
is to remove all the bits not angelic.
Michelangelo’s art for all time stands apart
but there's something further to heed.
For there's a bit more to the fine metaphor
in the tale of the angel he freed.
“A beautiful thing never gives so much pain
as does failing to hear it and see it.”
For in all our insides a bright angel abides
and is just waiting for something to free it:
to remove all the parts which harden our hearts,
to chip out the darkness and pride,
to smooth the rough patches, to polish the scratches
and unshackle the angel inside.
© January 26, 2013
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