hands like these

You cover the ground before you with the deep purple blanket inherited from your grand aunt. You place your goods along the lines woven into the wool. There is a section for every type of ware. 

You align the bowls with the bowls, some clay, most wood. You stack the plates into threes and sixes. Three for five. Six for eight. Bargains in the arrangement. Easy banter and dealing when the plates are already stacked. Tricks of the trade. You put cups, saucers, small statues, each of which don’t sell, into an area all their own. You align them like men dancing around a fire. You make them lakes of fire. You design heaven and hell with the ceramic and wood creations you’ve made. 

“Hands like that,” your grand aunt said, “should be making a living.”

 You will tell her story to each and every person that asks how you got started. 

Caps and stands and ballasts in rooms waiting for a line of sailors to come and claim them, carts and horses and flags in aisles for the soldiers to grab on their way to the field. 

Push me up.

Fast to the hold.

I seek an image sought, an emotion lost in the brevity of words and the singing of the sounds. 

Lost, as tooth is lost in the bite, among the roll and dance of crunch, bubble, snap. 

Fasting for dreams in two notes.

Halving shards remaining from the Cadman explosion. 

The ceramic bowls dart between cooking fires and glazing flames, from one kiln to the fork. 

The buyers come in the late morning. They have had their coffees and eggs at their hotels up the hill. Their skin is like pale milk, like clouds above the lake. Like clouds in the pictures you have seen of the sea. The market is tourist friendly. The local guides tell them they will be safe there. They tell them how to strike a bargain. 

Your blanket and the blankets of all the other sellers are spread in a parking lot adjacent to an old building. The tourist come in their driven Land Rovers, park at the far end, emerge squinting and putting on sun glasses. They hesitate until their guide tells them the story of the market and the rules of buying. You can hear the guides say, “Don’t let them get you with their first price.” You recognize most of the drivers. They were once here, on the pavement, and with some good fortune were able to turn their fine English into a job carting tourist across the country. They smile at you and wear sunglasses too. 

Making is the practical side of this life. 

Preach and be heard in the relics of long past lines, laugh as we do in the pews to heaven. 

To say, I, conjures many images. Figures tied to you, we, he, she, it. I want to know what is there, what lingers, why the I takes a stand, why the I falls in love, why the I worries. I want to know the I is better, safe, and sane. And if there is a me, and this I is not me, I want to laugh and find joy in difference. 

Even if I seek to uncover the bitter in the shapes around me, in the sobering tastes of close breath, I don’t have to smile while I do so. 

The tourists carry gold pieces in their cheeks and trade them, after some arguement, for the wooden wares you’ve crafted out of balsa wood and soft stone. 

Hunger is a transaction, worth the sum for which it is traded, and little else. The carpets are spread with thoughts of assuaging turmoil. Your grand aunt wasn’t the first of her kind. You are not the last. You wonder what your bowls mean in relation to the carved figurines of your neighbor. You admire the polished metal necklaces and bracelets your wife’s cousin passes off as silver. You think of the stones in the river next to your home village, the greens and blues tumbled out of them over time. These white people would buy them, six for twenty, ten for thirty-five. You could sink them into clay and bake them. Bowls for someone else’s dinner. Plates for another person’s meat. 

You could tie the stones into leather. Perfect bracelets for young men. Keep away sickness. Ward away pain. Witchcraft is not your speciality, but you could find a partner, open another blanket. 

Stone has this face. 

The ocean has this pace. 

The flag waves into the wind. 

The practice of making hasn’t yet aroused my passion. 

A scene then:

The buyers will pass before your dinner. The mash brought in your metal tin stays warm the entire day. Hunger bubbles around noon, when the sun is highest, like a call. You avoid the meal, cast an eye for the water man, take long drinks, think of a daughter, son, wife. Then back to the blanket and the spread figurines. Count the pieces there. All in good order or not. Shout to you neighbor, “And what you going to do then?” 

The question shakes a bit, unsteady in the heat. Watch the shadows trace arcs across the blanket, from the bow of a wooden ship, the end of a long spoon. Two weeks of time embodied in these splinters. The wooden men dance all day around the saucer lake. Days and days of cutting, shaping, sanding, painting, as the son and daughter played around you and finished their chores before lunch. Only hours of time in the shadows thrown.