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Fiona Dunscombe

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The Practical Potter

for Hugh West

His voice: tall, grey, weathered,
leads me to think he
has the face of a warrior; dried
and fired.
His clothes will be crisp
and eccentric: recent interviews,
accolades, ‘portraits of the artist’ all
contained in white frilled
extravagance and a cocky hat.

*

So when I meet this
constant, blood and tears man,
built like a brick kiln,
I am surprised.

He embodies elements
I forgot to remember, like
toil.
He turns on the radio
then wedges the clay,
kneading, pounding this mud,
weighing, shaping,
lining up lumps on a plank;
wetting his hands to begin.

The wheel spins:
the first dumb thing rises
slickly. Large agile hands
make shapes in the clay,
his body rounded, cradling
pain-filled, motherly.
If his back aches he pays no mind
whilst palms spin
and fingers fly.

I imagine his life spent
crouched,
the years of practice
producing this potters' nod.
In stripped cold space
he sits
turning the earth
inside out,
heating its ascension.

*

In the shapes and colours
of the finished work
you see what he doesn’t tell:
he has cradled his secrets,
saved and precious, poured them
into the smoothes and ridges
of grey clay, raku firing them
the hue of his soul:
deep azure, purple, sea green, flame:
streaks of salvational gold.

 

Page(s) 13-14

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