Regarding Spin

Yes, I’m in stuttering health, creatively stalled, and a stranger to my former equilibrium.

Shall I blame ongoing writer’s block?
The pressing needs of loved ones in crisis?
A cherished pet’s decline?

Or, today’s news?
The silent ballot, awaiting my mark?

So many ways to spin it.

Is there such a thing as vertigo of the soul?

If this notion arrests you,
join me in imagining yourself

CLAY, ruthlessly wedged,
kneaded, those oh-so-persuasive
hands of the Potter
pinpointing your wayward grit,
and my hidden bubbles of air,
every last, extraneous gasp
p-r-e-s-s-e-d out, until
we are dense, compressed.
Warmed, and waiting.

Quieted. Secretive.

For here’s the geological truth: clay
stores up forgotten light
(so many small deaths, over time,
enriching the soil).

There’s only one way
to get clay on the wheel. Splat!

Kickstart and rotation ensue.
There is wobble and slippage,
exertion and whirl.

Discarded sludge.

And all the while, God’s muddied
palms enclose and imprint us,
with seemingly merciless thumbs.

Yet notice one wrenching,
centrifugal truth:
out-of kilter
clay, by its nature, wants
to fly off the wheel.

Ask any potter. Clay has a mind of its own.

I resist,
muscle my way
toward my own reinvention.

“Oh, good save,” friends say,
as if we can salvage, well,
almost anything.

Here’s another spin:

Today, the word of the LORD comes—
“Like clay in the hand of the potter,
so are you in my hand”—words
echoed by physics:
and we’re talking stillness now,
stillness perfected in motion.

For see how the clay finally rests,
with nary a wobble:

centered,
balanced,
perfectly earthed.

Adios, ego.

Hello, promise.

Dear Shaper of Clay,
temper today’s pressures and
questions and dizzy thrum.
May grace evoke nothing
less than
surrender, as the wheel spins.

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Friends, your prayers for our daughter’s surgery and subsequent recovery were wonderfully answered. Thank you, again!

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Photo: Quino Al on Unsplash