The cold clay cut from the leavened riverbank
and the living water working into it
through the marvelous imagination of these fingers
transforms the insipid shapelessness
into plates, cups, mugs, pitchers
posing with style, hands on their hips,
spinning in time or taking flight.
All these things standing across the kitchen shelf
every morning, all the things that wait on you
at table, ingrained with an etiquette,
a genteel manner, stylishly offering
cookies and cream, butter and chocolate,
rise and take their places around us,
adorned with the emblems of their service:
ears of wheat, turkeys, wildflowers and bees,
loves of bread and fishes, hands clasped in prayer.