Terracotta

March 9 2016

The white ceramic bowl

was thrown by hand.

Its slight asymmetries.

The spot of roughness

under the rim.

Was some imperfection missed?

Or is this the maker’s print,

his fine arches, whorls, and loops

indelible?

The treadmill’s methodical thump.

The weight of the wheel

circling heavily.

The cool clay

with its receptive touch,

slippery, wet, sensuous.

It’s the process he most loves;

the object

is immaterial.

Because the hard impervious glaze

will lose its lustre,

the indestructible bowl

end up in shards.

As fire turns to ash

terracotta to dust.

In the creator’s hand

a shapeless lump

as basic as water, air, earth.

He hunches over the wheel;

aware of nothing but

as his world turns.

It’s really a poem about the creative act:  this the idea of flow, immersion, and utter absorption, as well as the uniqueness and idiosyncrasy of the creator’s vision.  But I think it can also be read as a metaphor for divine creation. Which is the last thing you’d expect of me!

Although it makes sense if you realize than an atheist doesn’t need to take the Bible literally in order to admire it as a piece of literature, as powerful allegory. And also makes sense if you see my allusion as a bit of mischief:  appropriating sacred imagery for my own profane ends. Because ultimately, a poem like this is an exercise in language, not an expression of belief.

There is something here, too, about illusions of permanence and posterity. Pottery lasts a long time. Ancient Sumerian cryptographs have endured far longer than anything in computer memory ever will. But still, even a fingerprint held in clay is transient. Nothing is truly “indelible”.

There is also a very elemental aesthetic appeal in working with clay. So the subject lends itself to poetry, where the visceral and sensuous work best; where language needs to be muscular and tactile and implicated, rather than intellectual and analytical and detached.

I like the references to the human hand:  the uniqueness of a fingerprint; the sensuous feel of wet clay; the creator’s agency. And the whole poem is worth it, just to be able to say “terracotta”:  I love its sound, the image it evokes, and its literal meaning – baked earth.