Jenny’s pot
Needs a rescue
From the high shelf
On the turquoise bookcase
That hangs over my desk
In the bedroom with the melon painted wall
Of our Santa Fe house
Jenny
A gentle lady from Acoma
Made this pot
Larger than her other pots
But as pots go
Not very big
Jenny called me Darling
And every August
Would sit with her pots
On a side street off the plaza
Being judged not good enough
For a booth inside the boundary line
Of Indian Market
Maybe she didn’t care
Her smallest pots sat cradled
In the pockets of an egg carton
Selling for two or three dollars
A pot
I loved Jenny
And would buy her tiny pots
To give friends
At home in California
But then she’d choose
An ornament shaped like an owl
Or a plaque with birds on it
And with both hands
Place it into mind
And say
This one’s for you Darling
Take it
And the price would be the same
As all the little pots
Put together
I’d just bought
One early morning at Indian Market
As the sun climbed over the Sangres
And turned on daylight in the Plaza
Someone came to tell me
Jenny died
Gone in winter from a cancer
That gave her pain
I cried for Jenny
In front of the booths
Facing the Palace of the Governors
Cried in the middle of a crowd of people
Who had never heard her name
Who may have wondered
Over their seven a.m. cup of coffee
“What’s eating her”
Afterwards at home near the beach
I went around collecting Jenny’s pots
From my friends
Gathered them like the last roses
In October
Explained my need
And gave them someone else’s little pots
In exchange
No one seemed to mind
Jenny’s pots live a quiet life
In California
On the middle shelf
Of an old pine corner cabinet
Nine-hundred miles
From the origin of their clay
Now in Santa Fe
Near the top of the bookcase
Jenny’s gift to me
Sits high above my reach
Almost forgotten unseen
I need to rescue it
Lift it down from there
Bring Jenny back
Into my awareness
Think of her everyday
And if I am grown
From that time
What was beautiful
In Jenny
May become beautiful in me
*Written 1987, from Poets are the bravest, pub.date: 2001