Heirloom
Pottery wheel, spinning clay; flexible and unbroken, inanimate and unspoken, as it waits through the flames.
Seeing to it the soul is set ablaze in an oven; getting hotter by the minute as it hardens fragile clay.
Passing through from place to place as time sweeps away; Chinese blue and white porcelain, slightly cracked, remains unshattered, antique as it was priceless; made in 1738. My favorite vase.
Then came the final phase, the day she fell from her clumsy base. Now in place a thousand shard’s that can no longer stand where she stood, I thought, it could not be replaced.
Perhaps there was nothing I could do on that very dreadful day.
So today I make a new one, in tradition of the past.
As I hand it down my family tree; knowing it wont last.