Ode to Joy
In progress, midday.
December 5, 2009.

Some of What I Love
about Sculpting

The sunlight told
me to stop grinding and
take the first photo, and as soon as
I could clean the dust from my hands
I did. Words came later, as I wondered
what those images might say about
my love of carving stone and
what I might say about
those images.

 Some of what I love
about sculpting is that every
minute of every hour of every day
of shaping stone offers so much to
see and touch and feel.  So
much to experience.

Sensations.
Colours.  Shapes.  Movements.
Changing forms. Perspectives. Textures.
Dreams.  Fantasies.

And when I am
a hawk, exploring the dimensions
of a form as I carve it, changing it stroke
by stroke, space and time recede
and I’m in another
dimension. 

I am in
all mountains,
in all seasons, forever,
imagining all of that
into being.

Dust avalanches
thunder down slopes.  Tremors.
Architectonic tempers.  The grinding
of glaciers and rivers and wind-
borne grit.

The genesis of topography.

In February 2019,
I included readings of this
story and The Quality of the Light was
Incredible at the end of a slide show,
Art in the Garden, at the Baynes
Sound Garden Club.

First published in the Vancouver Observer.

Edited March 2021