The Cracked BowlRunning the crystal edge with a leather wandstirred sweet tones into the wind the sounding bowl all that remained intact when we arrived the ash, some embers still aglow two days after the fire, the bowl surviving heat over two thousand degrees the distance off the mantel and the crumbling second story floor, to land whole amidst the rubble I lifted it like the Zen gardener who after long afternoons sitting in a quarry, tenderly rolling his tobacco into rounds inhales finally rises-- touches the edge with one finger the rock splits open, unveils a millennium, the history of this place, story of creation the crystal bowl opens in my hands the way lips part to form sound the last sound a crack-- how it waited through the forging of fire the fall, burial beneath ruins the fracture hidden until that moment my two hands lifted it, awed the touch unraveling matter through the veins of stories unknown: rock woman bowl |