Drinking from the Ming   

by Estill Pollock

 Estill Pollock reads 

Drinking from the Ming



in RealAudio format.
     

   
A glaze of spirals decorates the bowl,
its curve of water dimpled to a shoal 
of winter sunlight. Fuzzy logic jewels
the rim, its lap and rub of molecules,
until the tongue’s touch hangs in silver blue
and liquids rise to blood the ingénue.

The potter’s seal in bird’s-foot shape, the year
a notch or hitch of knots translated here
in keeping with the fashion for the rare,
the enigmatic borne upon the spare,
provide a provenance of silks and spice
roads inching west to test the artifice.

The willow cages coax the nightingales
to mark the keenest keys with saffron scales.

      Able Muse

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