The Poet on impasto thins into spire

The hand knew the weight of what it left. Ridge, shadow, the small refusal — paint that would not lie down into picture. Here, it said. Like this. My angle. My hour.

Then the sanding.

The strokes went quiet into carrying. No hand now — only the holding-up: stone that forgot which stone was first, the account no one can itemize still paying out beneath your feet.

And higher, the mass repents of volume. Octagon. Circle. Cone. Each course a smaller confession until confession runs out of throat.

What you took for arrival was the material ending one breath below the sky.

The dome keeps a room for what it cannot name. The spire keeps none. One warms you from a fire you’ll never find. One aims you at a country you can’t enter.

Ask the cathedral to choose. It won’t. It stands because both hold — the warmth without a candle, the longing without a door — and it will not sand them into a single, honest, unspeaking wall.