Look homeward

Look homeward                                                                                         
 
I am a crooked man;
I walk a crooked mile.
 
I got crooked on the rock pile,
a lifetime of turning stones into rubble.
 
Pardoned now from the world racing by,
I repair dutifully each morning
 
to my studio across the stone green patio
where once more I return to my art,
 
my profession, stretching my crooked back
and blue-veined hands
 
to sculpt and mold the selected, marvelous,
lovely-veined marble into angel faces
 
to grace the graves of those truly dead;
to dream in my dead sleep of the straight and true
 
and the meticulous, love-centered
turning of rubble into dust.
 
O child of God, as Wolfe once urged his angel –
look homeward; look homeward.