Museum of Glass, Tacoma, 27 August 2007
Pulled with insulated mitts
From the hot shop cooker
Then balanced on a fulcrum
Is a spinning metal rod
Crowned by molten glass
Encoded from gravity
Memories magnify and deform
To a centripetal symmetry
By annealing ovens and
A glassmith’s caliper
Dip that smoldering stick
Into a borosilicate glory hole
Let chaos cede to semblance
Until the cooling cocoon
Shatters on the shop floor
Nearly always by accident
Adversity precedes contentment
We simply confirm natural laws
However hopelessly unequipped
We are to create or modify them