Today’s prompt is to follow William Carlos Williams’ thought, “No ideas but in things,” and write a thing-poem. I have no wheelbarrow, no jar in Tennessee, no plums in the icebox.  I am obsessed with bowls.

Is it the way the light shines
on the concave surface of the blue bowl,
or the way the shadows gather
underneath its curving belly?

Or is it, rather, about the beach pebbles
and the shell with its iridescent green
resting in its sheltered slopes?

Perhaps it is the memory of wet clay,
the hands that scooped and stretched,
that shaped and fashioned its elegant contours.

How it settles, how it breathes in the lamplight,
how it speaks my name when I pass by.