To my Great Grandfather, Grady Ledbetter, who's hands where his memory

The Great Grandfather who:

worked with the sands of all things past

as a pastime. While Robert Creeley and

John Cage made wide ripples across

broad currents, he cut wood for the kiln.

Willed by distant blue's of Mr. Stephen

Pisgah Forrest lived through his hands

in a short lived neon flux, Asheville,

ornate with kudzu shush

grew like Wolfe and grows still.

 

Aspirtions in outskirts,

I wander watching the western stir

pen and padhanded, blending elements.

Every once of pigment pings limits

but off of paper, life seems metastatic.

 

Feeling vampid pumes of sweat for bread,

sparse meals and inner city shame

made it hard sometimes to hold my head.

Transiting small circles like a limp Kerouac

hope smelted at times.

pulling empty cupboard doors and

footing it to school and work

When I passed through the library

preservation of craft heals hurt.

 

Simple potter vessels stand

behind lens and put near enterance

all who enter pass by these works of hands.

with a placard for empathsis.

It reads: pisgah forest pottery.

written is the the name Case

diminishes me, he is now

at peace, at his substrates place.

Stephen's name is there too

but I do not see the name Grady

I am however reminded off my coffee mug

and I wonder if its twin has be snug

Inside display, humbly

for all to enter to see

If its undisclosed

prehaps also undisclosed

is the fact his blood is thick.

and while patrons look in praise

they pass me by with pinning eyes

I go by with cheap pencil and pad

hoping to go  uncredited

under glares at my grandchilderen