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#12 decembrance

When we moved to this property there were very few trees and sometimes in our minds’ memory it is still pasture. One huge, sterling tree is a Chinese big leaf magnolia that we transplanted as a seedling. I remember one of the last Thanksgivings that my dad made the trip to join us. His eyesight was failing but he was very happy to be here and have us cook the big meal. One morning he asked me to go retrieve the newspapers that had blown all over our yard. I had to tell him that what he was really seeing was the super large fall-beige-colored magnolia leaves. Virginia persimmon trees have also become a major presence in our local landscape. My dog loves to eat them no matter how astringent. I love to photograph them. Neighbors who grow non-native varieties gift us with plump fresh ones. My friend of many years who lives in California has sent me these beautiful dried ones. When these fruit gifts arrive I draw them to document them. I savor each one with the memories of the evolving landscape, long friendships, and the enjoyment of each variety.

This year, in the muddy lighting
of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand, gripping the handle.
He’s so happy that I’ve come home.
I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.
All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find a box.
Inside the box I find three scrolls.
I sit beside him and untie
three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,
asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,
the strength, the tense
precision in the wrist.
I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.

–Li-Young Lee, excerpt from Persimmons, in Rose, BOA Editions

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#11 decembrance

During the week leading up to an open studio I go through so many feelings. There is a wide gamut; doubt, joy, exhaustion, fear, assurance, creativity, and organization. The standard fear–perhaps similar to dreaming of the class you are enrolled in but never attended–is, “will anybody come after all the effort?” But old friends do show up and new acquaintances appear. The event becomes a gift exchange of looking and sharing. One friend had stopped at an orchard and shared her bag of pears and apples. Another painter friend said, “Oh, I want to paint this!” Today’s recovery involved photographing and drawing the gifted fruit. I processed the emotions of the week. I wish to express my gratitude to my friends who show up, read my messages, listen to my doubts and cheer me on.

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.

–William Arthur Ward

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#10 decembrance

Wherever my husband Warren seems to go he comes home with rocks in his pockets or under the car seat. I understand the impulse but there are times when I feel overwhelmed by the accumulation of rocks and pebbles. So sometimes I do a secret grand clear out and make piles in the garden. I am always afraid of what Warren or Zoë might say, but am sweetly surprised by their discoveries of what they say the fairies have created in our yard. At the same time in my clay studio I am trying to recreate the energy of a rock as a plate in clay.

“Wherever I go, pebbles seem to find their way into my pockets and bags. When autumn comes, I discover the long-forgotten relics of last year’s walks in my coats, each one of them a memento of a place, a time, a thought process. They scatter every surface in my house, too, sometimes requiring a grand clear out, when I gather them all up and tip them into the garden. Still, they find their way back in. I could almost believe that they reproduce.”

–Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

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#9 decembrance

On my walk this morning I stopped to ponder a tree that was still full of leaves in December. It didn’t seem any more protected than other trees or stronger or taller. It was just a tree along our road and it got me to pause, look, and pay attention to the landscape and wonder about the last leaf of the season.

You Can’t

They will fall in the end, 
those who say you can’t. 
It’ll be age or boredom that overtakes them, 
or lack of imagination. 
Sooner or later, all leaves fall to the ground. 
You can be the last leaf. 
You can convince the universe 
that you pose no threat 
to the tree’s life. 

Maya Abu Al-Hayyat from You Can Be the Last Leaf, Maya Abu Al-Hayyat & Fady Jouda, Milkweed Editions, 2022

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#8 decembrance

We have been hard at work in our gallery space preparing for this weekend’s open studio. I asked Warren at one point, “what have you learned as we do this each season.” He replied that he feels lucky that we can follow a dream of making pots and displaying them in a calm place, sharing our vision for how we imagine pottery to be seen, used and appreciated.

The Conditional

Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.

–Ada Limón, Poem-a-Day, March 14, 2013

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#7 decembrance

My older brothers spoke so fast and told such complicated jokes full of puns, rhymes and double entendre it was hard for me to find space to speak at the family table. They ran fast and made films. They went skateboarding and took their surfboards on the subway to go surfing at Far Rockaway in Queens. When I went with them I stood on the sand heron still (although at that point in time I had no idea what a heron was) to watch them. Sometimes we would wake at 6 am on a Sunday morning before the traffic emerged to go skateboarding in Manhattan on 96th Street and Park Avenue where there was a good hill and a smooth pavement. Sometimes I was afraid if I got too close my brother might grab me and take me down the road flying on the skateboard or taunt me to climb up some cliff by the ocean. Perhaps I wanted to be taken like a mouthful of feathers. But most of the time I just wanted to stand stock still so my brother would not see me while I watched him drop things off the sixth floor roof in the dark. I remember writing about a nest made of wind–not knowing how to spell the word wind–but I knew I wanted the wind to hold me while we watched the sunset from the roof.

Nest

Sometimes I am afraid if I step close
   my brother will take me, the way a fox

carries a small crow in his jowls,
   over hillside, under shed, wherever

fox go. Some part of me wants
   to belong inside– mouthful of feather,

a tuft of dark that makes us both.
   Sometimes I am afraid if I stand heron-

still, my brother will not see me
   at all, no matter the light, not hear me

no matter how pitched the shriek.
   Between fears, between wants,

I am building a nest out of wind.
   I am asking the wind to hold us.

James Hoch

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#6 decembrance

There comes an evening in December when I leave the studio and there is no light on in the house. And so I have to face the dark. It’s not late. I don’t need a watch to tell me that, or a friend. These days I have a phone which can double as a flashlight, but I try to pause, to feel the dark, the habits of my steps on the driveway, my routine direction through the leaves. It’s a simple moment that I tend to cringe at, but if I remember to drop my shoulders and zip up my coat I can trust my foot will find the path.

 To Face the Dark

To face the dark,
one does not need a light.
Nor does one need a watch,
a feather, a melody, a sword, a pen.
One doesn’t even need a friend.
To face the dark,
one needs only to face the dark.
There is something easier then
about the facing, when we know
we need no preparation.
Nothing is asked of us except
the willingness to face the dark,
the willingness to pause
in that moment when we
cannot see, cannot know,
cannot float on the sea of habit,
cannot fly on the feathers of routine.
But already, I’ve taken this too far.
It’s so simple, the invitation,
that it’s easy to miss what is asked.
Not a journey. Not even a step.
Just the chance to face the dark,
to meet yourself in that facing—
and to notice what being erased
and what’s doing the erasing.

–Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, poem/video

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#5 decembrance

I forgot that my mother made books with me as a child until I found (after my father died) the remnants of my drawings and her words in a folder in the basement. I loved discovering these small construction paper efforts, because I had made so many books with my daughter– tiny folded and stapled pages with scribbles and words. The books I made as a child were clearly not evidence that I was a poet, but testimony that my mother was paying attention even though I was the third child.

The little books I made with my mother attest to the way I wrote backwards and highlight my love of drawing. No one was keeping score but these scribbles captured my particular gestures. The books were boundaries within which to explore.

When I make pots I love the constraint of making functional pottery, but simultaneously I have a very broad definition of the idea of function. Today’s vase maybe seen as a shard. It began as a circle and then became a shape one can slip through– and yet the pot is something you can hold in your hand and turn.

What is grandeur? Who is keeping score?

I believe in the circle, in light that surprises me, when I can

   believe nothing. The palm reaching out is a gesture, 

       a boundary, a circle one could slip through, or something

you could hold and in turn it could hold you back.

–Ada Limón, excerpt from “In the End Everything Gives.” The full poem, properly formatted can be found at this link thanks to the National Gallery of Art

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#4 decembrance

When we first moved to Virginia we let the grass grow tall in front of the house. I remember wondering if we had a new kind of thistle that was yellow. Then I realized it was goldfinches perched on each purple flower head. Yesterday morning I walked the dog down to the end of a nearby gravel road. At the road’s end with its circular turn around, all I could hear were blue jays, robins, and crows. The birds had flown up into the tops of the bare branches of the willows, persimmons, and dogwoods. When I think back to growing up in New York City roller skating in Central Park I never imagined that poetry would be part of how I understand the world.

It’s the Season I Often Mistake

Birds for leaves, and leaves for birds.
The tawny yellow mulberry leaves
are always goldfinches tumbling
across the lawn like extreme elation.
The last of the maroon crabapple
ovates are song sparrows that tremble
all at once. And today, just when I
could not stand myself any longer,
a group of field sparrows, that were
actually field sparrows, flew up into
the bare branches of the hackberry
and I almost collapsed: leaves
reattaching themselves to the tree
like a strong spell for reversal. What
else did I expect? What good
is accuracy amidst the perpetual
scattering that unspools the world.

–Ada Limón, from The Hurting Kind, Milkweed Editions

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#3 decembrance

On my morning walk in the damp mist the trees were black silhouettes against a grey sky like loose brushwork on a bowl. I see the outlines of pots everywhere I look. But I have spent my life as a potter trying to see the inside volume. So much of my early training was focused on bowls that it took me a long time to arrive at a place where I could throw bowls intuitively without working against the voice of my education.

First Sight

I see an outline
of you everywhere I look.
We spend our lives trying to
see our insides. Have
you ever watched the trees turn
black before the sky?

–Victoria Chang, in The Trees Witness Everything, Copper Canyon Press