THE VOW
I love the warmth of copper and its pliability. Hammering and shaping metal is oh-so-satisfying. “Sorry, can’t come to the phone! I’m in my workshop, FORGING!” It even sounds cool. I used the wonderful book Contemporary Copper Jewelry by Sharilyn Miller as a guide.
The abalone pendant is inspired by Elizabeth Beck’s gorgeous poem, Why I Married the House Carpenter. She, in turn, was inspired by the Scottish Ballad, The Daemon Lover. If ekphrasis is writing inspired by art, I wonder what you call jewelry inspired by a poem …
Why I Married the House Carpenter
by Elizabeth Beck
A phantom is always easier to chase/The chill always easier than/warm sheets on summer nights. Wrapped in the comfort of your distant interest and cold vows/The ghost of your jawline against the very present curve/of my cheek and I can almost smell you lingering in the doorway/The prickling wind, heavy/with tidal changes, delivering/then casting
off
away
I am the anchor, I am the sturdy mast to which you are lashed
Each harbor, screaming,
Each voice, singing,
How could faith outlast and outshout/the mysteries of Gehenna-under-waves/or my singular pearl compare/to the vast jewel beds beneath/Not the venomous sting of waiting/the swallowing sea that frightens/unknown, concealed and hiding in cold hours of contemplation/Instead let me take leave and row to you/Let us find our own savage island and
Terrify each other
Watching for the old darkness in shifts/our sore muscles soothing to the SOUND
of metronomic surf
Your eyes shining from the shadows of pain and moonlight/the undertow of eager hands/I am drowning – here in my chair, my shivers shaking/the thin panes/How many memories before we
Pulse into shards
And it SO BLACK, this sea
Each masthead light, a sulfurous hope/dangling in temptation like the blind beasts
Below
An impulse unaccountable/or, to tear and tear apart/in constant resistance
Unraveling tapestries until my fingers are/slick with the time passing
These ill-started stories are the words I wear/when horizons thunder like the surf
And we are all gazing from the depths
The rain tastes like a harbinger/like choking salt/Yawning before us, the maelstrom
Is each prim neighbor to deny the commerce of siren and shark/blood in the water/blood in our beds
And attend to the soft dying not very far
From shore
Can they not see
Faint but sure hills beyond and beyond
What hills are these
Cloudcast as the stars
“Come to bed” my husband commands
Your small whisper continues/to divide beneath my skin/divide and multiply
And breathe in my shallows
This poem first appeared in Creative Colloquy.