COSTLY FORMATION

 

Twisting, folding, slapping, scolding, pounding with His hands,

  Every hardness softened, every weakness pressed,

Feeling, minding, pressing, finding the offending grain of sand,

  Slippery through His fingers the wetted clay is dressed.

He must know its every facet feeling every part,

Lest the shaping vessel be ruined from the start.

  With His insistent pressing, the precious clay is blessed.

Paddling, hurling, bobbing, whirling with increasing pace 

  Carefully He shapes it as delicately He feels,

Touching, holding, smoothing, molding with the fingertips of grace.

  It rises to His vision on the dizzying, spinning wheel.

With tender touch and tiny blade perfect lines He traces,

Carving out the form in a dozen glistening places.

  Now the hidden beauty in the earthen crock's revealed.

Shaving, plying, pressing, trying to save the now listing form.

 He stands for just a moment as the disc begins to slow, 

Then beating, dashing, crushing,  smashing what He so carefully had born.

 With unrelenting blows His hopes He sacrifices.

 Now all of it is lost in one devastating crisis.

 His hopeful dreams in shapeless clay are left to mourn.

Renewing, returning, repeating, restoring the remnants that He smote,

  It rises again without resisting the Artists shaping skill,

Spinning, turning, growing, learning each line and grade and slope.

  All that He imagines the vessel now fulfills,

  The chastened clay conforming to His visionary will.

 So elegant, so graceful, it rises to His hopes.

Crowning, glowing, blessing, adorning the place where it is shown,
  It has not forgotten its humiliating days.

Revealing, collecting, including, reflecting the costly past it owns.

  Its priceless pain was baked beneath the shining glaze,

  All that He invested in its pristine form displayed.

In the splendor of its image eternal truth is known.

This poem was published in the book Take Me To The Garden.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YSVLW24/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i10

Amazon Author Central page.