It takes a long, smooth stroke practiced carefully
over many years and made with one steady motion.
You do not really cut glass, you score its length
with a sharp, revolving wheel at the end of a tool
not much bigger than a pen-knife. Glass is liquid,
sleeping. The line you make goes through the sheet
like a wave through water, or a voice calling in a dream,
but calling only once. If the glazier knows how to work
without hesitation, glass begins to remember. Watch now
how he draws the line and taps the edge: the pieces
break apart like a book opened to a favorite passage.
Each time, what he finds is something already there.
In its waking state glass was fire once, and brightness;
all that becomes clear when you hold up the new pane.
Cutting Glass
Jared Carter
(1)
Poem topics: dream, fire, remember, time, water, work, voice, edge, passage, long, clear, knife, sharp, book, score, hold, liquid, watch, wheel, favorite, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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