The Trials
(Trial by fire and tears)
Stolen!
That morning
cracked in rooster’s beak
like shards
by his foe-sacked
kilns *1) where he had been…
Stolen: no doubt!
The fire limp
and hooves stamped in the clay
spoke of war’s price:
with their master potter,
that night, the village paid.
For he, prized prisoner,
was taken
to foreign lands,
far shores. Now villagers
— chins hanging low–
his fate bemoaned.
Wind shaken stood his cottage,
door framed, his pale-eyed
wife held their son back.
“He is too little,” cried.
But, at 12 years old, the lad
had gleaned enough to dare and try.
He tugged her apchima for days.
“Allow me, eomeoni) to light the kiln,
allow. To abeogi in my dream
last night I promised.”
She then smiled and wiped her eyes.
“Just one time, son.”
(Trial by water and earth)
So digging days long by the river
he found the soggy best,
scooped and lumped it back uphill
with hands like abeogi’s
–clay gloved by the yeast of earth–
forming, throwing it until just right.
One half he wheeled and then
its open twin in sameness joined,
made vessel whole
while at the seam, the edge em battled,
like his village struggled to survive
the war, close in: before and after. Heal.
In sleep then the boy slipped
with tired arms
on grasses spent and bent.
When dusk awakened,
with hungry eyes
his pot he met:
like pregnant eomeoni’s belly now
the top had slightly sagged,
yet mattered not.
Next eve the wood sparked,
candled ready, in the domed uphill,
then crackled hot.
(Trial by wind and fire)
Oven ablaze
the wind approved.
Its dragon tongue torpedoed
through the chambered kiln,
around the pot war waging
upon war itself.
All night the rumble raged
like furies at some shore,
fused, sealing powers’ trial
onto the mortal clay
by cinders bellowed
and translucent orbed.
As a new day the rooster open laid,
the villagers circled the son,
helped hoist his ware
out from hot smoke,
in wonder wiped its barrel size
and sagging –seen as proof–
to gasps gave way,
to tears of hope.
From ashes’ cover,
the youngest now
stood up:
a master potter of their own.
Notes:
1) At the end of Korea’s Imjin War (1592~98)
apchima (Korean): apron
eomeoni.(Korean): mother
abeogi (Korean): father