Bowl
For Tony Jones
Walnut wood not only has its grain,
the darker thin striations of the tree’s years
within that tawny ground, striped from a blush
of almost pale-rose pink to palest wheatstraw–
waves tugged like isobars around knots
of high pressure where branches began –
pitted with tiny pin-pricks that shoal
against the tide; it also has transverse
stripes of subtle dark and pale, visible
only at an angle to the light,
that defy the eye with a sense of
undulation that is not there beneath
the touch: once it has been sanded silky
smooth as is this perfect bowl. I found
this bowl in England’s most un-English church:
amidst the loud discordant roar of
lavish decoration in Baroque
declaration of wealth and power
to the glory of a God that had made
all this possible. And surely some hand
of inspiration had guided the hand
that lovingly crafted this perfect bowl
of walnut wood: so thin, so strong, so perfect
in its execution; its chaliced
profile lipped and based with confidence
and delicacy; its stroked sound a whisper
of the tree it once was and the life of
the man who made it. Thirty years
in the police force, he said, then I suffered
a stroke on holiday in France; and
retirement offered the chance to regain
the pleasure he’d had as a boy with his
father, messing about with an old lathe
they didn’t really understand. And now
his hand, self-taught he said, made bowls and plates
of ash and sycamore, oak and walnut:
perfect pieces radiant with contentment
for their maker and owners alike.
I told him I would give it as a present
after enjoying it myself for a while,
but already I enjoy it too much
ever to let it go. I love this small bowl,
sixteen centimetres across: so lovely
that not all the gilt and ornate plasterwork
and overstated portraiture of
Baroque superfluity can speak
so loudly or so true
of what a mortal man can do.
31.8.12
Tony Walton