Through Shining Glass:
4. Clay and Silver

" -- like you're into words...eh?"
you ask incisively, thinking
to look bluely in my mirror and catch
the Silverer looking back

I have watched you, too
through eyes of silver, searching:
your hands unfold with measured calm
and visions come, unwinding and unveiling,
moving half-unseen within your mind
and I become your curious measurer
I expand and contract with your eye

A silence forms; I'm silvering back
the Image as it wanders: the clay
you ponder with your hands as it
slow-dances...your quiet hands'
mere gesture, then, troubles me -- like pebbles
in a well of mirror-stillness
(as though silver weren't solid)

Inside the glass, all solidness unforms
and I reflect form far away, yet never touch
the distant clay: I watch you blink a cautious eye
and then...you nudge, you mark, you play
beyond blue vision, thinking blind through clay
into a half-known lotuslike clay-glazing,
unfolding like the instress of a seal
you've signed forever with your hands --

So solid is your name, so strongly held
self-inwards, I reach out and pierce through
crackling, shimmering glass: the shivers flash
and fall away...I speak in shards and silverlings --

" -- like you're into words...eh?"
you laugh, as old as clay

© 1984, Carin Perron