4. Nepal / 20. “Colorado Ceramic Arts”

        •  A white cat led him into the mountains to meet God.

        •  The rhododendrons bled down the valley and he knew something briefly.

        •  His sister carried him back in her arms.

When he came to, he was at a plastic table in a tea shop and she was playing goats and tigers, the local chess, with a waiter. At that time of year, there were no tourists in Pokhara.

So they could play goats and tigers all afternoon.

Nothing has happened to Ralph since that time.

Locking up the back, he passes through the workroom into the shop proper. Here everything is immaculate, the cleanliness an intensified kind of silence. The glass shelves cast both shadows and reflections: as Ralph strides through, the room ripples.

It’s like sunlight on the surface of the ocean, seen by a swimmer grasping up for it; and Ralph is like that swimmer in his graceful, weary, practiced movements. As he leaves, and stretches up to draw the steel security door down over his incurious reflection, he’s briefly aware that he’s going home:

then again only of wind and a shape –

something like a locust, but round enough to hold water –

which might, in porcelain, impress him as capable of playing goats and tigers through the afternoon, while, at a neighboring table, its comatose, agape brother overlooks Lake Pokhara.

Shouldering his satchel, he begins to walk home.