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You had your truth against the world
You walked in your long cape
Waving the cane you carried for show
Pointing to the builders and the laborers
How your art was to leap from drawings
Into the three dimensions.

Your drooping bow tie was a dandy’s
And your porkpie hat a jazz cat’s
People could have giggled at your dress
But instead they flocked to the demigod
A maker and Master in steel and concrete
And wood and textile
And glass of multiple hues.

You came to Chicago
Began as the pencil in one master’s hand
But quickly you took the pencil yourself
A voice rising from the prairie
For nearly seven decades you were the Master.

The acolytes gathered around you
Bending their ears toward your wisdom
Hoping deeply to absorb your gifts.
To be masters of themselves.
They stayed till you drew your last breath
In bed in a place on the fringe of the desert.
And many never left.

You had your truth against the world
You left the woman you first loved
And a half dozen offspring
For another whose fate was cruel fire.
A third came to you and brought hell to your home.

A fourth danced into your heart and made you a father
One more time
And helped rule your kingdom
And kept the flame of your gospel
Ablaze long after both of you departed us
In places on the fringe of the desert.

Your love of an idea was your love for God.
You rarely apologized for your voice or your visions
You chose honest arrogance, not mattering
What critics or press may have scorned or mocked.
Your friends stood to defend you.
Your believers cried to look deeper
To sound the depths of the heart.

The acolytes still travel north or west to your
temples
The Shining Brows
Where your disciples sit at their boards
Their own visions direct lines from your own.

Or they guard your shrines
With zeal and ecstasy
Against wrecking balls
And those who would shove the walls aside
For “progress” and erasing the Master’s legacy.
And they preach to the unknowing and curious
Hoping more will enter your fold.
That they will tumble into your realm, seeking
knowledge
Like the falling water beneath the foundations
In Bear Run creek in the Pennsylvania woods.

Is truth life?
Your truth was your life
The homes and towers and public places
Speak more of your truth
Than some of your life’s tales in your books.

People laughed when the roofs leaked
Or those odd chairs hurt their backs
But no one laughed
When you departed in a place in the fringe of the
desert
When they saw the bounty of your life
And realized it would flower and grow
No more.
No more, like a gingko tree, leaves wilting away
Branches bare forever.

If we studied, loved, and stayed close to nature, as
you suggested,
Would we feel your spirit?

You had your truth against the world
And you were the Beloved Master, beyond dispute.

About Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), architect