DREAM VESSELS # 25 Southwest Venus (Rivkeh’s vision) DRAFT

DREAM VESSELS # 25 Southwest Venus (Rivkeh’s vision) DRAFT
From a collage by Marsha Connell

Blackware, San Ildefonso—

feathers circumnavigating the pots

I met Maria’s grandson at the farmer’s market,

he’s also a potter who showed us the new techniques,

when I told him I had met his grandmother years before.

He is proud to keep the tradition alive.

On the pedestal in the gallery, a torso of a woman, 

with arms, head, and breast missing, 

her clothing tucked between her thighs. 

Such an odd way to dress for war,

was she an Amazon with one breast missing?

It also seems odd that a piece of carved stone 

would willingly slough off one breast. 

A mastectomy in stone?

The land folds its multitude of thighs 

to where the water gathers. 

The ollas pour the water of life into a parched land.

It wasn’t always so.

A trinity of ollas in perfect formation

preserved a way of life, an unwritten history.

These vessels of our bodies,

the vessels of the dead, and of life.

And the rotation of crops—

Once, the Middle East was the granary of the world, 

with complex irrigation systems, 

but the cycle was altered, the soil salted up, the crops failed.

Urok, Nineveh failed and the exodus began.

Starvation made them desperate. 

History changed itself again and again.

Invaders, Raiders, Crusaders, and us. 

Meanwhile in the New World, 

the old ones built pots inscribed with the key to life. 

Ariadne’s secret, the maze.

Anasazi redware, Pueblo blackware. 

What survives of a lost culture.

The accumulation of a people began with the pots.

While the Greeks carved statues of warrior women,

the sacred theater froze time in stone.

The pots whisper secrets no one can translate.

Summer 1992