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Mammals In Clay
The Congolese impala is one model
for my work and I think I've caught its twisted
horns and neck in the eggshell glaze.
The black eyes stare, not in fear
but in a surreal at-home instinctive gaze
that shines from behind some wide tree, with bright
glassy eyes and a turning head, two twisted
front hooves and a veering shoulder.
And then an Ethiopian slow
loris, crouching low upon
a flat rock, is another trigger for my replication.
But mine is a bit more tired by its surroundings,
not brown but gold, with its eyes golden
and glassy in the lamp's light,
mine needing to crawl, it seems, across the floor,
to meet up suddenly
with the others there: the ring-tailed lemur,
the blue-footed booby,
and the greatest of them all,
the giant anteater, heaving,
territorial, which pulls all the rings
of light into its body.
Then there are the tiny
squat raspberry things
that don't really look like animals or
have four legs at all.
Going on feet angling every
which way, they appeal to the senses and are closer
to matters of spirit than
to points or bodies where a person might find direction.
When I see them all facing me in single
file, I change direction and follow
in my mind a v of snow
geese in a swirling
wind. I become white and delicate
as eggshell, my eyes far away in a knobby
tree or near a pool. I imagine they might tire
of the room, and simply walk away, becoming
alive. But they can stay in clay as long as I desire.
Still heartened on tables and shelves, all
of their reality, at this moment, goes without saying
and is mostly as I picture it.
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