Fragment

the glaze is cracked into a hundred
pieces, veinlike brown, channels, spidery
lines rivermarks across the pottery
brown like earth
each mark a break, marking time,
the passing of the sun each day
into night, weird script in which
we can read nothing, yet still we
see the delicate strokes

once part of a matched set--now
a stray, all alone, on top of
the heap, pale color among the
brights, silently surveying the
other wrecks, the non-degradable
sherds of modern prosperity, plastic-
loud, inpenetrable, is an orange
barstool stuck into the earth at an
angle, four feet shiny tines pushing
down, taking root, the vinyl crown of
leafy torn petals yet unfurled,

grass grows around the edges--green ring,
verdant mossy, bold in the face of
all this black waste, chipped pottery the
smirking teeth exposed, grinning earth