Wood-Kerne Wild

Old Herne the Hunter ornament.
Stoneware and shiny brown glaze.

Mary Oliver: "To Love What Is Mortal"

IN BLACKWATER WOODS

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

--Mary Oliver

Note: I came to this fine poem from Jennifer Cutting's fine tribute to her beloved cat Mr. Sunshine, who passed away just recently.  Wednesday will be the seventh anniversary of the passing of my own sunshine-orange-boy Rudi.

"Math Trauma" -- by Chase Twichell

MATH TRAUMA

If you liked geometry,
it meant you were a prude.
Girls who liked algebra put out.
The cool girls (I was not one)
sat cloistered, passing notes
and scoring high on tests.

The first time Mom and Dad split up,
kids from down the block and I lit the dry field
behind the development, then with wet towels
beat back the racing edge on the verge of panic
until we were sure it was out.
I always got that feeling from math.

I writhed like a snake over coals
if it came near me.
Mrs. X, drunk the year we did
multiplication and division,
never checked our workbooks
so no one ever saw the horses
where the answers should have been.
That’s when I first wandered off into
the white pastures on my own,
with nothing but a spiky quiver of words
and an urgent question.

--Chase Twichell,
from Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been,
Copper Canyon Press, 2010

Whoa! (Fresh from the Kiln)

Clay: soldate;

glaze: abalone.

Clay: soldate;

glaze: oribe.

"Like a Whole Soul in My Hands" -- Chase Twichell, Her Father, and a Trout

SORRY

I'm to press the pad of my thumb
against the trout's upper jaw,
its teeth surprisingly sharp,
more like berry cane than teeth,
its eyes already beginning to look back
from the afterlife.  It's limbless,
like a whole soul in my hands,
and slimy, so I clamp it
with my knees to get a better grip
and use both thumbs
to force back the jaw until the spine
breaks slowly, like a green stick,
and the jaws half close
as if by failing memory.
Then later in the sink we slit
open the belly, strip out the guts,
see if it's male or female,
see what it's eaten.  If it's female
Dad clicks sorry his tongue.

--Chase Twichell

from Dog Language
Copper Canyon Press,
2005

The Spiral

The spiral:

my favorite shape;

my favorite motion;

my favorite plot-line.

Small Blue Bowl:
clay: soldate;
glazing: sea foam.

Green Man, Weary

Clay: soldate;

glazes: oribe and sea foam.

I was lucky with the blending, I think.