Ellen Chia, Thailand-Singapore
In its past life, it might have
belonged to any of these—
a bowl, a vase, a plate,
a teacup or an urn even,
objects fashioned by men
for utility, emerging from
the furnace pristine, glazed.
Then used, expired,
shattered into shards,
offered to the sea,
forgotten by men.
But Nature pursues
her own designs,
inscribing her signature
on things left to her disposal.
Wave-tossed, wind-licked
and sun-baked, this pottery shard,
a tiny fragment
of its distant past—
an inch-wide trapezium,
white with half a china blue
peony motif, has emerged
at the end of a sea voyage,
inconspicuous
amongst the debris.
There it lies in its new skin,
matte, chalk-smooth
with an altered disposition,
its edges now curvy and benign,
exposed still to Nature's
perpetual perfection,
bearing witness to the design union
of both man and the elements.
Ellen Chia lives in Thailand and whilst pondering over the wonders and workings of her tiny universe, finds herself succumbing time after time to the act of poetry making. Her works have been published in The Ekphrastic Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Neologism Poetry Journal, Zingara Poetry Review, The Tiger Moth Review and Chiron Review.