A Kind of Thinking

The potter turning clay into a vase
by force applied evenly to all sides, lifting
so what’s left is muscle memory,
willing container, and the occasional
faint impression of a finger—is this
what it was like, becoming? All summer,
we languished in applied physics.
A ball secured to a long string
hung from a tall pole. The point
was to punch and watch it return to you.
If someone hit the ball mid-orbit,
it looped back in the opposite direction.
That was all it took for a fundamental
change. I watched the clumsy injuries unfold.