Lay for the Day 6th March

In the United States, today is apparently Stoneware Pottery Appreciation Day. I don’t know what body has ordained that this should be so, but I am happy to help celebrate it. A poem from the book of Praises:

21. Of the Well-Made Pot

Than which nothing more precisely
adumbrates the hand
in all its shapely
digital melody,

for here are the pressure of heel
and guidance of palm,
pinch of opposed palps
with the dint of knuckle

that the whirled retentive clay holds,
turned to stone by flame,
in fluent sequence,
till like a hand itself

it winds the light around itself,
flexing foot, neck and
shoulder in thin air,
makes space dance to its tune.

John Gibbens, from Collected Poems

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