Love Song to Throwing Clay

In the long sharp light
That gathers this evening
We are there
Together breathing

Manifesting shapes
In time with the wind
As stories unfold
In the dampness of skin

As ruddy iron
Rushes into the cracks
Where wisdom is measured
In my hands, on the backs

The contents of so many somedays
Opening at my fingers
Made firm with heat
So the memory lingers

The lips of my mother
Pressed to the rim
Then parting in conversation
As the day starts to dim

The same vessel lives
In the unstable grip
Of my child’s own hands
As the contents are tipped

Now as dusk becomes the sky
And I run the wire across the bat
The clay gives itself over to this life.

Like a lover
The deeper you understand it
The greater it loves you back