Clay


We once made a roadside stop on Cape Cod
Where my aunt pointed out a sculpture her friend, Sonnie, made
Depicting the Cape’s founding from a sandy peninsula 
To a lively entity
With pirates and drunkards, but also preachers and craftsmen
She had a way of dividing faces into sections –
Hair – brow – nose – lips - all separate
While some magical force kept them together
Maybe it was Sonnie’s sheer will

Aunt Claire had some of that mojo too
She showed me these little ceramic men she made
Whose bodies were really just bent robes, all of one piece
With heads floating astride the arcs
Enough to make anatomy class graduate early
But the little “friars,” as I called them, worked for Claire,
A dancer who came up
With new means of twisting the body
Which wouldn’t fly at the bank or supermarket
But in her studio every step was like a 
Natural state of being
As if she came dancing out of the delivery room
Activated by her parents’ voices 
Truth be told, she was born with a heart murmur
And the doctors told my grandparents she should never exert herself
Although she swore she would become a dancer in spite…
And did

She signed me up for pottery with John, Sonnie’s boyfriend
A free spirit who was serious with our creating
But just as serious when Sombrero Hour came
During cocktail hour he once verbally provoked a navy vet
Who couldn’t figure out why
But I knew
John didn’t like the way the military
Whipped and molded personnel into shape
The vet came close to pounding John
But they eventually held their tongues during that party

I once saw an exhibit of the pots of George Ohr,
“The Mad Potter of Biloxi”
Whose twisted Shapes and prickly wit
Put off the pillars of society
(The pots were also twisted)

George would mug for the camera
And scrunch his features into new creations
While sporting handlebar moustaches which put
Dali to shame
Mad he was
But they forgave him when there was clay in his hands
Clay he molded into contortions 
A fakir would envy
Lopsided pots wanting to come crashing down
But Ohr denied them that sleep,
Restless as he was.
His “center could not hold” either. 

There were some spidery designs too
Webs and caught flies and Daddy Long Legs
Playing with their food

Also crumpled pots you could hardly get a pour out of 
Without staining your shirtsleeves
And one mug that doubles as a sieve
(Ohr defying you to drink)
Ugly jugs he probably used to practice his faces on
And more of such whimsy in clay
He called “Mud Babies”

They called him crazy
But now the auctioneers’ half-coherent babble
Stops at $36,000

In Jewish lore a creator would take a shapeless mass
-What the Talmud calls “unformed” and “imperfect”-
And mold it into a human shape to serve him
He would dance around the figure and utter the name of God
Until that animated this Golem
Just as The Creator woke Adam out of the clay

In the Middle Ages Rabbi Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague
Made such a Golem
To protect the Jews there from a Christian blood libel
It did, but then it ran amok, until the rabbi removed 
The name of God
And froze the creature in its tracks 

When I was 13 at camp
In a wild state, which alienated all the kids
I would run around pell mell and groundless
There got to be a hidden contract 
That no camper would address me
Until my behavior changed 
So I would wander, and sometimes get into trouble
Until pottery class… 
My refuge

The teacher would tell me all the possibilities
I could make 
In Clay
There I made a little bird’s nest with three eggs
(In robin egg blue, no less)
I used a sieve to extrude the clay into long strands
That served as my “straw”
With a thrown bowl below to give the fibers form
It could never hold food or anything useful though
Outside the shop I could hear young voices
Waiting to antagonize me
Nevertheless, my delicate nest waited for its glaze

And I waited for the day when those birds would hatch