Worldmaking
for Frances Senska
I
Surf Fishers
At the sea, blue shadows advance but hold their lines
as breakpoints woven into maps of possibility—
waves curl ink around a roller
to feed images of what sustains the people,
each one waiting to turn silver minnow
and slide through lacings again. The shore
has become slip and lines,
warmed tattoos on pot skin to hold
the tides. The moon pulls its weight,
fastened as a new shell button in the sky.
II
Sky Fishers
Concentric loop lid of a dropped butter bowl
forms the broken dome above us, low sky
like branches of cottonwoods, crisscrossed by sound:
we hear cannons, drumbeats, airplanes, laughter
netted in a flock of birds on oil-soaked cinderblock,
their tiny glazed shapes happy under clerestory light.
Here a magpie turns up its longest feathers
and flies upward, from the dug clay of dreams
to breath ever circulating, a green tail run of Trail Creek
held in glaze, earth to earth and shining water again,
ashes made of ashes, dust from dust.
– Noelle Sullivan
Tags: pottery, Bozeman, ceramics, School of Art, Frances Senska, Jessie Wilber, poetry and Noelle Sullivan