Concavity

From Ann Glover O’Dell’s Midwifing the Soul:

I hold with concave hands

an empty bowl

and pray as I sit

gazing at its contours

and ready space

this glad receptacle

for what might come.

I look

and pray

for all the empty bowls

and bellies sat beside them

whose pangs make known

the hollow hunger

crying to be filled.

I look again

at potter’s vessel

remembering I came from clay

and cry out “fill me

with living water

pouring down and through

the sacred round impression

in my soul

to help the hallowed hungry

fill their bowls.”

Advertisement