The Potter

It is a solitary job:

he works in peace while his boy digs clay from the riverbank,

the swallows dive,

and chickens scratch in the sandy soil.

These are life’s true elements, he thinks,

as he presses the pedal to turn the wheel:

air under swallows’ wings,

river-clay slick and ready,

the ash of the kiln, barley in the fields –

he pats the clay into a clump –

a woman has asked for a lamp stand,

each pillar base unique, its bowl-top ready for the wick,

a vessel just as bowls are, ready to carry light –

the pride of households,

he knows some go as grave goods

back into the damp earth,

his thumbprint still clear

on the arc of a rim or the base of a lamp –

he already has in mind the pot

that he will take to his grave,

has kept it back from grabbing housewives, greedy men.

Made on a day when his daughter learned embellishments,

her little fingernails pressing into the rim-strip

each mark like the slim petal of a daisy,

sweetly committed to her task

though the day was hot and the bowl seemed large –

as he shapes the clay,

he pictures The Last Day, as he has been taught –

when the villagers, his neighbours,

will rise from their graves to their feet,

holding his works in front of them

as they go towards their Maker, towards the light.