Eternally Shifting Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

I think I'll stay in the shade today
Away from the sun with its beguiling rays
That tempt me to come out and play
Only to bake me like a lump of clay.

I prefer to stay unfixed, unbricked.
I prefer to retain my amorphous state.
I prefer the privacy of my hiding place
Where I can remain unpestered, unmolested.

Let the world tramp by on its centipede legs.
Let it stretch out and bask in the sun.
I will coil myself up like a potter's urn
In a dark, damp place and become.

Here in a state of wakefulness
I will try to still my mind.
Then on my cool, smooth surface
I can begin to etch, to carve, to inscribe.

What shall I write?
What shall I design?
Something esoteric?
Something sacred?

Who is to say what is real, what is eternal?
I simply choose to experiment
With my own form
My own image
My own message.

But some day my clay will dry.
I may even be glazed and fired.
I may take one shape for a millennium.
I may be buried and dug up and studied.

But even then, my end is bound to come.
Someday, I, too, will shatter.
My substance will mix and shift like sand
In the rubble of infinite matter.