"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.