(jug)

The daisies
in the dining room
go perfectly with
the music.
I like to always
have them there.
They are my favorite
kitchen flowers.
I keep them
in a pottery pitcher
which lost its
handle, who knows when.
I bought it for
a dollar,
when its maker
died.
She lived in
a Spanish house
I had often
passed,
near where
my daughter
grew up.

The same people
had the estate
sale who did
all of them then.
You could recognize
their signs.
A hideous chartreuse
with red letters,
unique for their
neatly print.

I don’t know
much about her,
except how her garden
felt.
She had a little
studio out back,
something I always
wanted.
Though I wanted mine
down the path,
just a little farther
from the house.
Someone said
her husband
was an artist too,
though I don’t
know what he did.
No, think there
were paintings
in the house.
I don’t recall
what else,
nothing else
I bought.
Just the pitcher,
which I think
of as a jug –
& its sqiggly
little lid,
which made
me love it more.
The lid has been
sacrificed to the drawer
ever since,
so it can hold flowers.
I bought it for its
color – a selidon green,
a kind of aqua,
its bumpy surface
beneath the shiny glaze,
Transparent as
I prefer color to be.
The way the glaze
ran, leaving spots
bare.
I like it that
the handle’s gone.
It would not
be near so nice
still there.
The raw edges
where it broke
revealing the pores
of the clay.
I’ve had this
jug for years
& can’t imagine
letting it go.
It has the kind
of beauty I like,
I want to say
the kind you
have to look for,
but that is not
quite it.
It is the beauty
they meant,
when they said it was in the
eye.
It is the kind
of thing you might
build a house
around,
the kind of thing
I’ve made my
life from.

3/18/00