Bowls, Emptied
I picture them always separate, unfilled, never nested among the others.
In descending order: yellow, green, red. The missing blue.
Concave, hollow, hemispherical, freed of conscience.
Other images – the skies, denser with age.
You stirring with a wooden spoon, cigarette smoldering nearby.
Or the itinerant smell of new sod and wet soil.
My knee aches whenever I traverse stairs or turn quickly.
Which holds more grief, these vessels or memory’s lapse?
Inverted, their capacity remains constant as the heavens, dark or light.
The paling dome, a memory of freshly pulled onion.
Squatting, you would patiently pluck weeds.
I bite my tongue and kneel to place the flowers.
Near this stone, where the crickets chirr and dew worms burrow.
By this mound and these blades of near-silent grass.
Where I accept this moment’s offering. And you do not.
“Bowls, Emptied” first appeared on the blog in January 2016, and was subsequently published in Galway Review in December 2016.
O at the Edges 
Silent acceptance, perhaps?
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Perhaps. 😀
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In their emptiness, these un-nested bowls hold the entirety of the unbound (i.e., ecstatic, absent, cosmic, infinitesimal, fleeting, enduring, ever-present) sanctity we painfully and gratefully know as grief… This transcendent, richly synesthetic triumph is rates among my all-time favorite Okaji masterpieces!
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I love bowls – their symbolism, their practical beauty. And I love filling them. So much there. And not. 😊
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Exactly. Lol. 😁
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😀
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Love this: The paling dome, a memory of freshly pulled onion.
Squatting, you would patiently pluck weeds.
I bite my tongue and kneel to place the flowers.
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Thanks very much, Barbara.
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So tenderly evocative. An excellent poem, Bob
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Thanks very much, Derrick.
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I think this is one of my favorites.
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Thank you, PJ!
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Totally Love this!
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Thank you!
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LOVE your writing…..
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You’re always so kind, Yvette. Thank you.
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my pleasure – and do you recall last year when I linked your blog in an October post? Well I decided to link ya again in a similar post – might make it an annual tradition O….
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Thank you. Sounds like a great tradition to me! 🙂
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🙂 –
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Nice piece!
Sent from my Windows Phone ________________________________
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Thank you.
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At last, emptied bowls fulfilled.
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Just not filled! 😃
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