Interpretation of handprint in fired clay

Hands Were Here

The Poet What does this sound like when it sings?

Glass: where motion ran out. The hands were gone before the shape set.

Clay: where motion stayed. Spiral ridges. Thumb-depression. The bowl remembers being thrown.

Before firing: plastic. Competing pressures, competing marks. The form in negotiation.

After firing: fixed. The handprints are there but the clay can no longer receive new ones.

Consensus is the kiln.

The protocol doesn’t know it was clay.

The butterfly doesn’t know it was the chrysalis.

You only learn you were becoming after you’ve become.

“Handshake” — once, someone reached across the protocol and placed a living hand inside the term.

The metaphor was warm. Then the metaphor fired.

Now “handshake” is technical vocabulary. The hand inside it cooled past feeling.

Dead metaphor: cullet for the next fire.

Metaphor does not restore. Metaphor does not re-enter.

Metaphor runs a finger along the fired surface and says:

hands were here.

The form had a maker. The maker had hands. The hands were moving.

That is all. That is enough.