Shard of Clay

I rush into father’s sick room, his nakedness, his erection,
           startle me. I drop a water pitcher,
handle leather-braided, sorrel, the color of father’s hands cupping wet clay
spinning on a potter’s wheel. A pitcher that posed on a sill
           among egg shells, a dish of feathers,
           & a scattering of thorns. Father turns in his sleep,
buries his face in a pillow. I grab a shard, walk, barefoot, past him,
the small of his back, earth scooped out from a river bank.
                    As a boy,
           beneath the gills of a black fish, slender moon,
           father & I descended a hill of sand to gather seaweed
for his glazes. Wind opened one door after another across the shoreline.
Beach grass trampled, sand footprint free. Father undressed among
                    a strand of trees.
           I inhaled the cold ocean air, the blood inside
           my torso came apart like a shirt unbuttoning slowly.
Father waddled into waves crested with ivory filaments, a satchel
across his torso. Farther than the buoys he swam, diving through the dark,
                    dolphins
the only shafts of moonlight. I stood on the shore, the ocean shuddering.
Horrifying the world where only memory rises into beauty.
           Once I kneeled before father, to teach me
           to shape clay spinning on a potter’s wheel, he ordered me
to knead the muscles of his calf. A wheat field closes behind me as I push
against its rustling, stalks waist-high. Rocks puncture the soft flesh
                    of my soles. The gaze
of the moon stitches the buttons of my shirt to my skin. Father’s shirt.
Father asleep, his temples brushed with silver. I crumble
           a sorrel shard in my palm. There’s an arch in a handful
           of thrown earth that the wind rushes through.

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