A slab of grey-streaked marble cloud
leans against the pale blue sky
not yet gilded by the sun,
like a piece of construction material
tilted up to a just-primed wall
at a building site, in wait
for the workers to arrive
and fix it to its proper place;
then red-eye planes like diamond knives
saw sharp lines through the sheet of stone,
cutting it into squares of tile.
Copyright 2018
T. Allen Culpepper