pale blue sky, power lines, trees and pottery bowls, glazes catching the sun. you think of them before colored markers and pens found their home inside them - just clay, red brown or grey on the wheel, spinning around the potter's hands as he dreams of the evening yet to come, imagines his lunch in a brown bag, pastrami on whole wheat bread, the open air breeze from the window above. the slow whir of a ceiling fan - many things that run: deer, cats, the unleashed dog chasing birds, chasing squirrels around trees, the slow wave of evergreens on a berm with its house underneath. inside, a woman at rest breathing hard, his wife at home, the bedsheets pulled up to cover legs unshaven for weeks. the thin grace of fine hairs curved, bent or straight, resisting the flat press of flat sheets, playing with crackling static and sparks - so soft. he thinks how much he prefers his hands touching her legs running up and across, chasing her sex - how much he misses that sitting at work, the wheel which now makes his moment to moment, his scrape after scrape of clay that's not needed, dyes and glazes and oven heat waiting as patient as short, even breaths and tapping feet: tap-tap, tap-tap on the concrete; these sounds a chant of unseen things and words never spoken by flesh into shapes. not yet two round lumps with green and blue stripes, and curved smudged dots. not yet your useable knicknacks.