pottery

You say you want surprise but what you really want is form.

Something that holds something.

Ashes, oil, wine.

A good piece of language can be made of clay; think of a bowl as a structure that can contain meaning, like a sentence in which each word lives up to its potential, at least.

Making a bowl is like making a poem in more ways than one. A poem, however, doesn't hold water. 

It's hard not to be sad when thinking about time when thinking about the time it takes to make a poem in relationship to the time it takes to make a bowl, and the relative uses of each.

You can't be born in a urn, but you can die in one.