Higher readings
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Our race attains by careful steps (we say),
to knowledge of our clay;
the cleft of rock from whence it came, we know
percents of sand and loam,
of precious ores, and what the lime, and what
the iron readings say.
.
But if we care (says she) who mined the cleft,
who loved us first, gave breath,
and turned us on the wheel – we gain that life
from whence he came, who donned
our clay, to face and finish death – these things
the higher readings say.
.
Needy hearts (we say) find hope from fear of
fay warnings and unknowns.
We trust in high firings – turning wheels make
us true; fine glazes are
for strength and length of days – all these are knowns,
in minutes and degrees.
.
I see shards in a vale like dry bones (says she),
where hearts find no rain
and go begging for signs worth possessing;
asking “Whither after?”
not even knowing whether they were
vessels of wrath or blessing.
.
J.F.S. Anngeister, 2011, all rights reserved.
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Note: The poem has absorbed so much time in the past 2 weeks that I publish it here hoping to set it in stone, and to move on (I probably can’t).
The rhyme is irregular but functional, I think, and the six-line stanzas 10-6-10-6-10-6 (with rare but warranted exceptions) helped me embrace words which – out of thousands of wonderfully ‘possible’ and very deserving words – seemed to me most ‘fit’ to join my thoughts together in this particular case.
I worry that my meaning has become too terse from the lines being overwrought, and this makes me feel like writing more lines than I did. However, I decided that any more than four stanzas would run the pottery metaphor into the ground.
