Consolation for Tamar

Consolation for Tamar
on the occasion of her breaking
an ancient pot
Alicia E. Stallings

You know I am no archeologist, Tamar,
And that to me it is all one dust or another.
Still, it must mean something to survive the weather
Of the Ages—earthquake, flood, and war—

Only to shatter in your very hands.
Perhaps it was gravity, or maybe fated—
Although I wonder if it had not waited
Those years in drawers, aeons in distant lands,

And in your fingers' music, just a little
Was emboldened by your blood, and so forgot
That it was not a rosebud, but a pot,
And, trying to unfold for you, was brittle.

Neither rain nor glom of nit

I just received a parcel. At 8.30 at night. Hand-delivered by the contracted parcel-deliverers of Australia Post.

To made the whole situation weirder, it was in a postal sack which could only be opened with a blade, and in that sack was a cardboard box very securely taped up with masking tape, and in that cardboard box was a book wrapped up in butcher's paper.

I have unwrapped the book, and it appears to be a perfectly ordinary - if hard to get hold of - cookbook. After all that, I was kind of hoping for magical properties of some sort.