Tonight cars parked all around
the studio and the scene is lit yellow
and bustling. I remember the dust
of the place, where pots, as white
and thin as bird shells, wait
on wooden racks for color. Under
the sinks were buckets of glaze, silt
settled to the bottom of each bucket
and the fired color a mystery
every time. Brown turned blue;
cream turned green. So we painted
and dipped with a hope
that chance could take us to beauty,
since our short experience
could not.

But all this came after the clay,
wet bags in a spectrum from gray
to red to brown. Hunks of clay sliced
off the mound by the elegant wood-
handled wire. Then kneaded
on the canvas-covered board, the faint
grid of the canvas pushing in its pattern
and pulling out water.
At the spin of the wheel, you try
for stability, to have the piece open
and balanced around an invisible center.
And like the kiva makers in the desert,
your skill was known by the thinness
of your walls.

My parents always said people could be
proud of working with their hands.
And this was work.
One hand on the inside of the spinning
pot, the other hand pressing a counter force-sometimes with sponge, or wood rib, or
leather disk-against the outer wall, the two
pressures moving the wall higher
and thinner. The piece would end
with grooves in it, like an old 78 record,
the sound held in the pot just
the whisper of wet fingers.

- Linda Andrews