! ! Be Clay Poem by Michael Shepherd

Don’t be half-hearted about this –
be clay.

You know all about clay –
be clay.

Humble, submissive, reverent –
awaiting the Potter’s hands.

Enjoy that humility, that surrender –
feel already so near God.

Now the wheel begins to turn –
the Potter is here!

Feel His hands – the more you feel them,
the more you know the love in them.

Now you’re being shaped:
turned on the wheel like a dervish turns,

you’re becoming like that tall column of stillness,
rising from the centre of the whirling skirt;

still; in the memory of the Potter’s hands;
you recognise yourself who waited for you.

*

[leaning on the poems of Hafiz]