The Thumb Print
Like some dark, vacant
Ancient eye,
It peers, half- blinded
From the holy earth---
The handle of a common jug,
Once balanced on the head
By some young Danite ‘almah
(Or was she old and venerable?)
To fetch fresh water
From the Jordan’s welling,
Then dropped and smashed,
Through carelessness,
I guess,
For me to find.
Not smooth and glazed Hellenic ware,
This shard, slow-fired
And gritty crude,
Appears more Amos-ish
Than kingly,
A simple jug for daily use
In times of early iron.
No bounty for museums here.
Yet inside, smoothing out the clay,
Are finger marks,
And, by that vacant eye,
The proud creator’s special sign:
His thumb-print
Vaguely visible.
Then suddenly
All times collapse.
My thumb and thumb-print
Interface
And now we two,
So separate, it seemed,
By time
And place,
Are one at last:
Brothers
In the eternity of consciousness,
The enlivened, molded clay of
The Eternal Potter.
- Jay G. Williams