Shalom

Free verse poem written for a collaboration with artist Darya Bowen for The Artistree Project and presented at Fieldmoot in 2023.

Cracked vessels, all of us:
This multitude of broken bowls,
struggling to hold ourselves together on the table
with masking tape, or scotch tape, or even superglue.

Some of us mask the imperfections:
If we can just match the blue bowl
with the right shade of painter’s tape,
then maybe the cracks will blend in
and no one at the table will notice them.

Some of us are clear about our struggles:
We make no secret about the cracks we’re trying—
(but always, always failing)
—to fix, and it’s no surprise to anyone watching
when the tomato soup spills past the feeble tape
and pools on the white heirloom linens.

Some of us—
(so determined, so desperate)
—try to glue the fragments together
through sheer force of will.
In the brief, shining moment
when it seems like it’s working—
(just before the glue gives out)
—we glance up and wonder if anyone sees
just how hard we’re working
just to look like we’re whole.

We are not potters;
We cannot rewind the clock and reshape the soft clay.
We cannot soothe the sharp edges:
those cutting, mocking lines
that map the shapes of all our fractured failures,
proclaiming each tragedy with painful precision.

But there is an Artist who does what we cannot:
into the broken places and the wounds that would not heal,
Gold streams like lifeblood,
infusing treasure into these jars of clay.
Our shards become mosaics, each line a story;
our weak points perfected in strength.
When the Artist sets us, whole and holy, on His great feast table—
(no more cracks for shame to slither through)
—each golden vein reflects the Light.