The Pottery Shop
Poem: The world moved fast on shining rails, On hunger quickly fed, No one kept old or worn in things, They’d just buy new instead.
The Pottery Shop
They printed plates and brand new cups,
New fashions every day,
If something chipped or lost its charm,
It’d just get thrown away.
The world moved fast on shining rails,
On hunger quickly fed,
No one kept old or worn in things,
They’d just buy new instead.
One evening, while the city screens
Pushed offers through the square,
I saw an old shop tucked beside
A billboard selling Nair.
Inside, an older woman sat
With silver in her braid,
Her hands calloused from years of work
And marked by what they made.
She pressed a lump of earthen clay
No larger than a lime,,
Then said, “The point is not the thing.
The point is spending time.”
I laughed to see her shelves leaned full
Of bowls and none the same,
Some crooked at the lip or base,
Each signed with someone’s name.
I tried to shape a simple cup,
The walls collapsed askew,
The clay spun wild beneath my hands,
And splattered on my shoe.
She only smiled and pressed it down,
Said, “Good, now start once more.
Your hands are learning something new
They’ve never done before.”
The wheel kept turning slow and low,
My heartbeat matched its sound,
Then bit by bit my clumsy hands
Began to smooth it round.
At last a small uneven cup
Rose gently from the clay,
Not perfect, like the printed ones,
Unique in its own way.
And when she fired it in the kiln
I felt a foolish pride,
As though some quiet sleeping thing
Had woken up inside.
I carried home that crooked cup
Through streets of glass and light,
A thing no catalog could hold,
No algorithm write.
The lady had not sold me clay,
Or taught my hands to spin,
She showed me why creating things
Can wake the soul within.
By: Heather Patton / Verdant Butterfly
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By Heather Patton · Launched a year ago
A creative space with over 170 enchanting stories and poems. I write fantasy, folklore and genre bending prose that can step off the path into comedy, adventure or the unsettling at any moment.
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This is so good. I love this take on the prompt
What stayed with me here was not the final message, but the slowness inside the process.
“The point is not the thing. The point is spending time.”
There is something quietly true in that.
Sometimes creation does not awaken us because of what we produce, but because for a moment our attention fully returns to what our hands are actually doing.