A Love Affair with Art

I came into the world
profoundly uninterested
and thoroughly mediocre.
 
Not all that skilled at sports,
not romantic or great
nor even a joy
to behold in young friendship.
 
What brought me out of doldrums and
the death statistics for teenagers
was books, a sense that life still had one thing
on which a mind could find purchase.
 
And art in all its terrifying grace,
the statues looming in the night courtyards
illuminated by their pale limbs of chip,
the checkerboard floor on which I stood
a slanting undulating mass
between the picture house and library,
stood out as a place of safety.