Masterwork, by Barbara Lydecker Crane

The Creation of Adam, Sistine Chapel Ceiling, by Michelangelo (Italy) 1508-12

​Masterwork
      
It’s done at last. My muscles all complain
from four full years of working under strain.  
I climbed on scaffolds where I had to crane       
my neck to paint this vaulted, vast domain.
Assistants were inept and proved a bane;
I was the only one who could sustain
the vision and the toil and the pain
to bring to life the sacred and profane
mass of figures the ceiling would contain, 
where God and Adam, at the centre, reign.
I’ve painted God a white-haired man, humane,
as he imparts the spark of heart and brain
to Adam’s hand: the precious free rein
to set one’s sights, to struggle, to attain.

Barbara Lydecker Crane

This poem won First Prize in the Modern Sonnet category of the 2024 Helen Schaible Sonnet Contest.

Barbara Lydecker Crane won the Sonnet Crown prize in the 2024 Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest, Honorable Mention in the 2024 Frost Farm Poetry Contest, and was a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize in 2017 and 2019. Able Muse published her fourth collection, You Will Remember Me- illustrated, ekphrastic sonnets in the voices of portrait painters throughout history.  She enjoys making and looking at art, travel, and her family, which includes four fast-growing grandchildren and one near-perfect husband: he does not read poetry.

Sistine Chapel Ceiling, by Michelangelo (Italy) 1508-1512. Photography by Antoine Taveneaux, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons