Shapes Of Clay Poem by Sidi Mahtrow

The shape of things to come
Standing on their pedestals quiet and forlorn
The finished product of the creator’s art
Wait to see if those who view them will understand
To give up the message that is cast in clay.

These are the finished ones
Others came before and were banished
Either for being flawed or
Else suffering from the stress of birth.

These are not perfect,
There are many flaws to be seen by those who search
But that is the way of objects molded by the creator
This is not perfection, six-sigma
With each a copy of the other.

As students shaped by the teacher
They have become a new image
Something that would be unrecognized
As simply a molded lump of clay.

They have undergone the painstaking fire
The driving out of the impurities and
Yes giving up some of the substance
So that they can be a new form.

See them as a transition point
Between the inanimate and the living
A creation not unlike that from the womb
Each different, yet so alike.

Forgotten are those that failed
Shards on the pathway of time
Some misshapen, others simply failed
As internally they lacked the substance to survive.

Those broken idols are a reminder
That life is one of challenge,
One of stress, One of give and take
Where in the end the creator decides
Who and what shall survive.

So we see these lumps of clay
Colored by the trace elements that fuse
Into the outer glaze
Yet representing a transition
From what never was to what never would be
For they are given life only by those who
Share the vision, And then they become
Reality.
They are the shape of the future -