Ode to a Turquoise Vase

       ODE TO A 
        TURQUOISE VASE

                      I have cleared my writing table 
                         just to see it there—

            a day of clearing what’s unnecessary,

            for this one right thing.

               Not weighty with significance like Keats’s 
                                              Grecian urn,

             an amphora thick-lined with pine sap and 
                                                with time

       nor yet one of the Hopi vases holding corn;

   a moment only, absolutely,

   the fullness / release of grace

 in clay and color and

 the hands of friendship

 that have cupped it, giving it to me.

  The silence of Green Gulch

  is in its lissome form somehow,

    the sonor of the temple bells

    and paper-whisper of the wish tree

       and birdsong,

             the ancient lady apple in the inner garden

             wearing only winter light.

                      And when they come to her again,

                      the appleblossoms, in another turning 
                                               of the world,

                                    I’ll interrupt its perfect 
                                        concentration, offering

                              a twig from that same tree

                                         burst into imprudent

     white flower.

—Christie