Ink, Pots, and Poets

My new tattoo is lovely. I keep looking down on it with joy. I’d heard horror stories about the pain of hand tattoos, but my actual experience was wonderful, apparently it depends a lot on the artist’s skill and the quality of the needle. Yarrow had a fantastic time with the full-length mirror and the pictures on the wall. It’s definitely my most public tattoo, and I enjoy seeing the curling black lines move with my hand. I like seeing just a hint of it falling out of a long sleeve, or the small dots dancing up my arm.

 

 

I’ve pulled my half fired pots out of the shed, they’re lined up along my wheel in the kitchen, waiting to be dusted, inspected, and glazed before taking up rented kiln-space at the studio downtown. On Saturday I threw for the first time in almost two years. It will be a while, I think, before I really feel like I’m completely comfortable at the wheel again, but I was thrilled to realize how ingrained it all is. I am still a potter, my hands still belong in the earth. Throwing, my head is full of poems, and afterward, writing is easy, almost effortless for a while. I remember the poems I wrote in Pennsylvania, when I lived with my wheel, my good friend, and little else. Now we are on opposite coasts, she has a newborn son, I have a daughter who laughs with Jesus in the outhouse. Throwing again, I wonder where my life will go from here.