The Potter’s Muse

You'll never find me. Some days you'll even forget that I'm there. Then a recipe will call for something and you'll hunt among the shelves and there it will be again. That feeling. So you'll put your head on one side and narrow your eyes and wonder if I'm in the casserole, the salt pig, the rum topf. You'll run a finger along the rows of earthen brown and grey and green and linger, now here, now there, waiting on a vibration. You'll lift a lid and frown at the emptiness within. You'll wander into the living room and look out of the french windows and down to the road. In your peripheral vision, a vase or two, a pair of silent sheep. You won't look out across the yard, where the door stays closed and all within sleeps, dust covered, clay-smeared, glaze-splattered. You'll keep your arms crossed and your hands tucked tight into elbow and armpit. You'll look at a bowl, so intricate and beautiful that your eyes will sting. You'll wonder how you ever managed to create such perfection. You'll wonder how you'll ever find me again.