I sit here at my desk wondering what words

Should fly free from my chest are they

Happy sad mingled with tears laughter

A human moment or three in mindbending succession

We have shared and shined kin kiln

Pottery and poetry and after all

Are we not all just clay shaped by a kindly

Old man at the wheel up and down his cups go

Round and round in perfect hourglass tempo

It is not quite the thing you know to keep trying

To be better and better and in glorious painted colours

Sign your name to a shakily painted vase and say

There went Rose and Wise they never quite

Got up to speed

But it was a beautiful mess all the same

Ochre in a sunburnt, terracotta land

Marie Athena