The clay was her teacher,
her cool wet guide to the next shape,
her lesson in clear judgment –
the purgatory of the kiln
in which the clay died a death
she could grieve wholly in sadness and love.
The kiln – the sun that grows too hot,
too bright not to remind us of some distant power
in the great dark cosmos – dimensions of gravity,
*
because it is the sun’s daily job to be where it is
placed in orbital inexactitude like this shard of old pottery,
the one in my hand with most of a purple blossom fading
or the piece of green bottle glass,
its cutting edges only as rough now as working hands,
and a bit of old pitcher,
part of its lip still attached.
The flowers on it are yellow under scratched glaze.
That is a scallop shell on the pink sand beside a wine bottle bottom.
*
Las golondrinas will fly away
when they sense food somewhere else and return to the barrio
or they will flop broken-winged here in the dump,
el basuero of the many broken flowers –
in the kiln of sun –
desiccating among the fractured beauty of shards.