Revisionist Poetry – Clay Experiments, v.3

Under a single bulb the studio breathes —
clay cool as river-mud, the smell of earth and salt.
My fingers sink and pull and fold; the wheel answers,
a low, slow song that keeps time with the heart.

I coax a mouth from the belly of the lump,
pull a shoulder, cup a hollow for rain.
The clay sings back — quiet, patient memory —
taking the call of my hands and shaping it into want.

A knife makes a canyon; a thumb leaves a fossil thumbprint,
tiny cartography of the day. Shadows gather in the ridges;
light rests in the hollows like a careful bird.
Each incision is a sentence I didn’t know I could speak.

When the kiln closes and the bellies of the pieces glow,
heat unthreads the last of the dampness: mineral and flame.
Glaze curls like sea glass; a crack holds a thin sun.
What was wet and yielding becomes a stubborn witness.

They hang on obscure walls — not monuments but mirrors —
small, stubborn evidence of habit, of reaching.
At evening I stand with palms still dust-ringed, grateful,
reading, in each rim and tear, the private grammar of making.