Speaking with the Dead
For many months now I have been working on a body of work that incorporates my late father's pottery with my own work. I then wrote poems to go with these collaborative pieces addressed to my father. It seems befitting on the last day of Dia de los Muertos, All Souls day, and the day after Samhain to share this work.
"Held"
Ceramics: Gary Zur
Pillow pedestals: Rachael Zur
Vessels that once held food and drink
now hold the nourishment
of memory.
What appears empty is
filled with all the ideas
of you that we can’t let go of.
It is like you are with us,
in a piece of river clay
and the current of time cannot wash it
from our grasp.
"Marking Time"
Ceramics: Gary Zur
Medical casted shelf: Rachael Zur
Clocks and hearts keep
a rhythm that chants
of future.
Though hearts can still
continue their beat
even with a gaping hole.
Future comes while we
sit alone with our grief.
Our hearts still beating and breaking.
“Still Here”
Ceramic lamp: Gary Zur
insulation covered foam letters and shelf: Rachael Zur
(In a small puddle of lamp light
Any thought is safe to entertain.
I can look at a picture of you
And ask if you could be near me.
When my cat nudges my arm
I jump thinking it was you.
“Valley as Vessel”
Ceramics: Gary Zur
Foam shelf with packing materials: Rachael Zur
Fog hugs favored patches of topography,
hanging above the trees like a ghost.
I too have made a ghost that hugs my thoughts.
the desire to know you haunts my thinking.
I move through this bowl, the Willamette Valley,
A vessel that contains us both.
I am free to come and go for now,
You remain still.
“1980”
Ceramics: Gary Zur
Foam and pillow shelf: Rachael Zur
Happy 70thBirthday
To my not quite 32-year-old father
From his 38-year-old daughter.
"Ghosts and Telephones"
Ceramic goblets: Gary Zur
Plastic structure: Rachael Zur
Who is ghost to
to whom?
Neither of us knowing the other.
Is the space between
life and death
really so vast?
As though pottery is a telephone,
I hold the object,
and you pick up on the other line.
The connection on the phone
Works just fine;
What you’re hearing is a generation gap.
"In Your Absence"
The cups you made,
(which I sipped water from at the dinner table,)
asked me about my days.
It has only been
through your ceramics, that
I have known you.
Running my finger along indentations in the clay,
where your hands had been,
it is as though our hands touch.
Your pottery insists that I not
allow for our conversation to be
long or complicated.
I ask it: can I yell across
eternity and create
an echo that my father can hear?
My grief for you makes me ridiculous,
and I build a time machine
out of bubble wrap and foam.
I put your pottery on the time machine
so that I can bring you to me
for this one occasion.
Here, in your absence,
our work makes a memory
of the two of us together.
Ceramic cups which have held
water and dreams of mine,
are now cradled in my own work.
I carefully pad the place,
where remaining pieces of your pottery,
and your memory can rest.
