Notes To A Neophyte

Take the general mumble,

blunt as the faceless gut

of an anonymous clam,

vernacular as the strut

of a slug or a small preamble

by snail under hump of home:

metamorphose the mollusk

of vague vocabulary

with the structural discipline:

stiffen the ordinary

malleable mask

to the granite grin of bone.

For such a tempering task,

heat furnace of paradox

in an artifice of ice;

make love and logic mix,

and remember, if tedious risk

seems to jeopardize this:

it was a solar turbine

gace molten earth a frame

and it took the diamond stone

a weight of world and time

being crystallized from carbon

to the hardest substance known.

^ A neophyte, for reference, is somebody new to a religion, skill, or subject.