(first stanza after Rosemary Dobson’s Over the Frontier)

The pot I imagine
is always better
than the one
                I make.

But after all these years
my hands are learning
how to work clay
against the turning wheel
how to have it climb its own line.

Done now, I set the finely turned
white porcelain beside
a small stack of
shallow dishes thrown
by an Indian village potter.
Light glows through
the white; sinks into
the terracotta and sleeps.

Lesley Lebkowicz