Vessel
When the moon
is winking
like the Grey Sisters’ eye
passed from housetop
to housetop, glassy bright
and wide as a fawn’s
I feel your touch
the wind in the night
cool on fever’s summer,
you who can kiss with the taste
of rain and break the drought,
your look slips my skin
wet and terra cotta slick
as the clay on the wheel.
Run your potter’s hand
across my back
reshape my nights, my days
with lover's fingers
pliant as willow.
Fire me where the blaze
burns white.
Paint me with
bard’s colors
blue as the high july sky
rosy, yellow, crimson
with every flower
then take me to the well
where thirst is quenched.
September 2011
The Graeae: old women", "grey ones", "grey sisters", or "grey witches"; alternatively spelled Graiai (Γραῖαι), Graiae, Graii), were three sisters who shared one eye and one tooth among them. They are one of several trios of archaic goddesses in Greek mythology.....~wikipedia
Header Image: Explore #360, posted by slokaa on flick'r
slokaa's photostream
Bottom image: Italian Glazed Earthenware Vase,
courtesy wikimedia commons
What a potter of words you are! Wonderful.
ReplyDeletemmm...it is nice to be clay in the hands of another. and have your nights reshaped...giving you an AMEN on being taken to the well and a Halle-LU-YA-Hell-Yeah on thrist being quenched...
ReplyDeleteyes i have had the high test this morning...
Something tells me I shouldn't have read this with "Ain't No Grave" playing in my ears, that was quite an eerie touch. Great write her, very sensual and seductive with that nice touch of mythology you know I'm a sucker for.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing with us!
Magnificent, I am editing a three Magpie poem for my grandmother today and so enjoyed your three sisters reference. I don't know how you have gotten me to adore love poetry but these inner paramour poems are immensely satisfying. Wind that kisses with the taste of rain was so evocative and appealing (here it blows with the hint of snow but I love snow (we get eleven feet a year)). It is that same sense of relief being cradled in lover's arms that arrives with the rustling, golden aspen leaves of fall. We live in a grove and I knew immediately when I arrived that I could be at home with an enormous organism enveloping our entire area, a something greater into which I could nestle into. The reshaping, the bringing of color, the source well remind me that I am deeply in love with life. Nature the only unrequited love that gives so much that it is impossible to fall out of love at all. It's such a glorious gift you have. I feel I should bring gifts in return when I arrive at these stellar offerings and lay them in honor of the poet and her muse. This morning I’ll leave wreaths of kinnikinnick full of berries, intertwined with the last of the season’s wildflowers, accented with bulbous mushrooms from our tree stumps, hummingbird nests, and Blue Grouse feathers.
ReplyDelete@brian; if today is like the past few tuesdays, you're going to need the high test. ;-)
ReplyDelete@LV all my poetry goes well with metal, I hope--and how could witchlight do anything but good for "ain't no grave?'
@Anna: I'm so glad you enjoy these;for years the only sort of love poetry I wrote was dark and bitter. It's quite a relief to have this new melody weave its way into an old old symphony and change the theme. It brings a great deal of peace, and lays many ghosts. I like that it ties into nature's largesse for you, because that's where much of the instrumentation originates...thank you for the berries, nests, mushrooms and feathers. They're better than diamonds and rubies to me.
For a devout atheist, you sure know how to pray ... maybe it's just a matter of knowing which gods to pray to, here Luna, the Weird Sisters, and Euterpe (and Blogger for good measure). It's an old prayer, sent by every poet up or out or in or back to the source, that the words that follow are true to the spirit level, and cut to the quick. You should believe in miracles, because you -- with Their help -- delivered. Our thirst is quenched. - B
ReplyDeleteOh this is so lovely.......wonderful image of the body in the hands of a potter. Sigh. Beautiful beautiful writing.
ReplyDeleteThank you, dear Sherry.
ReplyDelete@B: Isn't there a bit of an oxymoron going on with "devout atheist?" ;-) I do love those spirit constructs you mention--well, except Blogger, though it must also be propitiated--as well as any religious could, perhaps more because for me they are the voice of the human, always worth celebrating when it rises above the brute. Luna last night was at her most ravishing, and who am I to turn her verse away. Thanks as always for reading, and not least for your insight.
you really brought this home. it accelerated. that drink at the end was so satisfying.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ed, I really enjoy your own writing--it's got a feel of its own that never falters, and I'm not much for short prose usually.But good stuff is just good stuff.
ReplyDeleteSo sensual and silky. I love it.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the brevity, which doesn't reflect my appreciation's depths, only my exhaustion. :-)
i want to be taken to the well where thirst is quenched! what a wonderfully delicious and sensual build up to a sublime ending. love it!
ReplyDelete♥ d
Impudent strumpet, you tried to slip this one past while I was busy, or something, didn't you?
ReplyDeleteThis:
"you who can kiss with the taste
of rain and break the drought"
is my favorite part. Wonderful stuff, dear Witch.
Lovely--k .
ReplyDelete