my life with ceramics
in the shrine of the kiln,
glazes of weka feather
rangitikei river bed
peppermint licorice
houhere flower
desert road kanuka twig streaked with snow
dad’s lumpy porridge
Ohakune midnight
taupata berry orange
blackbird’s back
spinifex-inscribed dune
and the crackled beads of redcurrant and tamarillo
are blasted so richly I shiver
it’s the fire in pottery that most scares me
but there is fire in bread
and when my lover spins my wheel, stirs my pot
she feeds the flame in me
my mother’s is the body that turned me
hers the vessel, the vase I became from
what this potter makes with earth and water, fire and air
pigments and care
breaks into sharp hard shards
will shatter when dropped
chip because someone knocked it
sun spots splattering my skin
as lichens quilt bark
time will choose me
and this body that held me centrifugally
glazed with clothes with raiments
will fold into the earth
fall into the fire
*
breathing holes
the earth is much bigger than this bowl
whose luminous surface is smaller than the midnight sky
yet as your eyes walk the rim of the bowl this potter’s hands have made
you see every ocean you’ve loved, every mountain you’ve admired
as your gaze dives and slides over shiny sided slopes
you breathe the space within the bowl, the air the bowl holds
before then, dwelling within the particles that are making the bowl
your mind finds spaces, the nothing in everything
the ashes of dying stars cooling, the bowl the air holds, cooling
where the outer upper edge of the bowl meets its horizon, its shore,
your held breath can be released again or all breathing stops --
exhaltation of the nothing in everything, the everything we share
whose inscriptions are random or designed
as spinifex, driftwood, gull prints on winter sand
as rain-dance, snow-streak, mist-haze on mountain range
*
shallow bowls’ grace
so shallow
they lie as ears to the ground
listening
the colour of thrushes’ chests
open-palmed they hold enough
for easter for matariki for christmas
for every special birthday
for everyone for everyone for everyone