The Ceramist

I liked the smell: I think it was the smell
which lured me into her workshop. She was
sitting in a corner, surrounded by
a myriad of mono- or bi-coloured
artifacts, pottery of all sorts, jugs,
pans, containers and trays, and all simple,
essential in their shapes, yet beautiful,
their quantity doubled by a mirror
containing them all, but for the little
figurines on a shelf right beneath it.
She was beautiful, intent as she was
on her work and oblivious of the world
outside, of a little walled town busy
as ever atop a green Tuscan hill,
seemingly so, at least, for she replied
even before I finished my question:
Sorry, my dear, those sheep are not on sale;
they were made for another boy, and they
are waiting for him to take them away.