Before I had the visual language for pots I loved the raw materials. If my father was still here he might tell you about the time I tried to wash the car with mud or the times we spent making pinch pots out of clay found by the beach in Montauk. He might tell you about how he encouraged me to make a glaze out of crushed Coke bottles and Elmers glue. These experiences are like stories from another age. When we cleared out my parents loft I went through their cabinet of pottery. I could recite the history of the pitcher from Mexico, the albarello from Italy, the blue and white bowl from China, and the George Ohr from Biloxi, Mississippi. My brothers knew my parents loved these things, but they sat on the shelves like obsolete trinkets from another age. These objects spoke of my material loves, a special language moving beyond the holes in my socks and into the wild stems and flowers we picked from the roadside and put in odd vases.

RELICS

Before I knew words for it
I loved what was obsolete
crumpled at the foot of a closet
lost in the street
left out in the rain
in its wet story
from another age
in a language that was lost
like the holes in socks
I loved the rust with its steering wheel
in midair above the forbidden
chassis and the mouths of tunnels
the eyes of dust
no floor with its pedals
that I was never to touch
because all of it was
dangerous
and the touch of it
would never come off
though I could tell that no one
really believed that
as it stood there behind
the garage that had floated to us
like an ark from the days of horses
and I stood at the corner and listened

– W.S. Merwin, from The Moon Before Morning, (Copper Canyon Press, 2014). Copyright 2014 by W.S. Merwin. [LINK]