Gedichte - lost & found (2)
A Kind of Thinking
The potter turning clay into a vase
by force applied evenly to all sides, lifting
so what’s left is muscle memory,
willing container, and the occasional
faint impression of a finger—is this
what it was like, becoming? All summer,
we languished in applied physics.
A ball secured to a long string
hung from a tall pole. The point
was to punch and watch it return to you.
If someone hit the ball mid-orbit,
it looped back in the opposite direction.
That was all it took for a fundamental
change. I watched the clumsy injuries unfold.
The world was tender work, ours
and not, tamed and taming. Girls gathered
flowers for crowns, boys whispered
in the shade of the basketball courts.
What happened and didn’t pushed
with equal force. Head against the bus
window, colors passed beneath the bridge,
the river. The colors passed, no sense
sufficient to make sense, but gathering
at the edges, impressions of some order;
sudden gladness bloomed with all
the qualities of light. In its loveliness,
summer said something encouraging,
and yet, for all its intimations, indefinite
and silent, careful with becoming.
Maya Catherine Popa
The potter turning clay into a vase
by force applied evenly to all sides, lifting
so what’s left is muscle memory,
willing container, and the occasional
faint impression of a finger—is this
what it was like, becoming? All summer,
we languished in applied physics.
A ball secured to a long string
hung from a tall pole. The point
was to punch and watch it return to you.
If someone hit the ball mid-orbit,
it looped back in the opposite direction.
That was all it took for a fundamental
change. I watched the clumsy injuries unfold.
The world was tender work, ours
and not, tamed and taming. Girls gathered
flowers for crowns, boys whispered
in the shade of the basketball courts.
What happened and didn’t pushed
with equal force. Head against the bus
window, colors passed beneath the bridge,
the river. The colors passed, no sense
sufficient to make sense, but gathering
at the edges, impressions of some order;
sudden gladness bloomed with all
the qualities of light. In its loveliness,
summer said something encouraging,
and yet, for all its intimations, indefinite
and silent, careful with becoming.
Maya Catherine Popa
