Life can be seen beginning and unfolding in a handful of small works,

small sketches that catch small persons making small time toward small places. 

Small works have the common touch,

the whisper that has wet all lips,

the point from which all other things can be seen. 

 

They are carved slowly by thought-filled carpenters

in cold workshops from favorite pieces of wood. 

Hand-rubbed with linseed oil,

they are soaked near an open fire, and given to grandchildren as toys.

 

Small works suck up whatever moisture they find

and throw their roots through anything they happen to touch. 

They grow there, cracking rocks, piercing bellies, searching out the sun,

and finally blooming petal by petal as inevitable as all life and death.

 

Crawling sometimes across the backs of used papers in three-ring binders,

sometimes layered across stretchers in attics,

and other times fusing through electronic matrices,

like children and birds, they leave muddy prints that point to everything else. 

 

Small works are where the end of the world steps off and begins over again. 

They have powerful beginnings that can be taken anywhere. 

Small works have magic bearings and are driven on diamond axles

by endlessly dancing intricate mathematical Ave’s. 

They exhale over exquisitely machined brass gears,

seamless valves, and glass ports.

 

They sing as tiny faces on painted fingernails,

wander oceans crowded on flecks of light,

and hide in volumes of technical dross. 

Small works litter the skies at night,

coming home by day

to cling like bats from the cave of my brain.