The Angel On the Mantel

the angel on the mantel comes from an old wagon road that cuts from desert brush into the burnished hills where creosote breaks up and scatters at the base of the Chiricahuas where Fort Bowie Calvary slaughtered Apache braves where an old cancerous man treks miles of primitive trail into the heart of a sacred mountain for pure white marble, cut into blocks and stacked one hundred years ago to wait for a truck that never came it's an arduous journey for a piece of rock especially for a man half-blinded as a little boy by that first nuclear blast in that sneak attack on New Mexico arduous for a man riddled with cancer who could be spending his days easier "what behooves you to do it?" "it's something to do while I'm here," he says "we all need something to do while we're here even if you're sitting on your couch, watching t.v. eating potato chips it's something to do this is what I enjoy, so this is what I do" he finds his chunk of marble it tells him what it's supposed to be he sculpts the figure as he sees it roughly and really not rough at all for he feels more than he sees and you feel what he sees angel on the mantel do you feel me