Vessels of clay,
one a real sea-shaped fluted shell;
one gourd-like, smoothly black;
one carries the smell of rain on heather and bogland;
one polished and refined in its glaze;
one a knobblywild passionate ocean-wrested elemental struggle
with spume and wave and storm;
comes then the scent of red desert and eucalypt,
and there the delicate scent of the many petalled rose,
and one for all the world an inverted bowl like a magnanimous breast:
I am looking at these;
I am looking at Mercy;
I am looking at us,
the one and the many,
the each and the every,
clay vessels treasure laden,
the body of Christ.