The lump of clay with which you start
seems no mystery; after all, it is little more than mud.
No more, in fact, than the mud you scraped up as a child
from the damp earth beneath your grandmother’s apple tree
to make tiny dishes and fancy sculpted figures
which you never named, except maybe
freer from leaves and seeds and twigs.
The lump of clay with which you start
seems no mystery, but even dirt can fool you.
And you know this. So even though you’ve wedged it
long enough to make your forearms ache
and Methuselah sigh, you will wedge it just a little bit
longer. Because you know.
What you don’t know, ever, is whether
there really is potential in the bump
you’ve smacked onto the wheel, coaxing it to center
with the heel of your hand and a sponge full of water
in those first few spins, when you’re just remembering
the music of the turning, the cool fine feel
of the top-heart as you press your thumb down
to concave, navel, hollow,
always with the bath to keep
friction from tearing down your walls.
You can hope there is a vase in every throw,
that every pound of clay you slice off the end
of the pugged line can, at least,
be a beautiful pot or plate or bowl, but
what if that isn’t the case?
What if the likely isn’t in the clay?
What if some lumps are only ever going to be lumps?
What if there is no beautiful and tall cylinder in
this particular pound; no lamp or candle-shade,
no flower-pond basin, no vessel at all
to hold your lovely: after all,
it is only clay, and it may be no mystery,
but it can fool you.
***
This poem is the 21st in my marathon of poems (plus 3.8) for Tupelo Press’s cool fundraising project 30/30. You can view the poems I and the other “runners” submit every day during the month of March, at
http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/.
Please follow our work, and if you find it even the slightest bit entertaining, engaging, thought-provoking, or just generally worthy, donate to Tupelo Press, an independent literary publisher. Sponsor me by entering T. Thibodeaux Baar in the “in honor of” line on the donation form, which you can find here:
https://www.tupelopress.org/donate.php
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