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Ode to a Clay Bowl
Neither rustic
nor presumptuous, the quiet joy
of your colors
like wildflowers
crisscrossing a lit field.
You only ask for trust,
“fill me with stew,
with pears,
I shall hold them,
they’ll ripen;
fill me with grapes,
garden greens,
with oats, with cornmeal.”
You who were born with civilization,
when surprisingly desperation
gave way to enough,
to surplus, to abode and hearth,
to table: a piece of clay
left by night’s coals
hardened by morning
and the rest is the history
of ash and air and salt.
Be you forever filled with plenty
and shared
and a steady hold
of what matters: harvest,
hope for the next one,
the eternal silence of the kitchen’s night
cradled in the void
you enfold.
—Lorraine Healy, 2013
for the 6 Bowls project, Whidbey Island
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