Broken Things

Nearly everyday when I’m out walking across the fields and hills and beaches here I find somewhere under my feet a bit of blue and white pottery – the photo shows some of my pocketed finds. I often wonder at the sheer proliferation of them; what was going on that so much blue and white pottery was getting smashed up in fields?!

Walk any path

in any direction

around the old field fringes

across the wide wild beaches

and there are traces,

for those who look

of ones who came before

I have collected traces

as I go, walking any path,

broken bits of cup and plates

blue and white fragments of forgotten meals

fractured from their whole

and turned over in the soil

sown for some later renewal

I turn over these broken things now

with curious fingers

wondering how they came to be lost

and found

was this once a plate, a cup

a common meal passed between friends?

The everyday mystery of the forgotten

Any path

in any direction

leads to broken things

blue and white memories

trodden down beneath careless feet

but beauty breaks the dirt

and brokenness becomes shared

© Vicky Allen 2018