"But For These Blows"

It's not that I was something or was to be something and this was denied me by cruel fate.

No!

But for these blows, I would never have been sculpted.

Whole chunks of my life went crashing to ruin. Again and again. Everything that mattered.

Nothing essential was taken away.

Sad betrayal, the missed chance, a fumbled love — true! — the rubble lies at my feet.

What didn't matter was removed.

I stand naked and free, so wonderfully alive — a product of the greatest art, such that I can know: the far ends of the universe conspired in my making; the roots of my being stretch back to the beginning of time and before; the effect of my smallest most unconscious movement will wash in the tides of distant planets.

I am not just the art, but the creator as well.