This week’s poem, Stuart Kestenbaum’s “Apprentice,” brings us into the past of a man’s work and younger sense of self. I love how this poem takes the actions and substance of pottery as metaphors for the ways we learn – and relearn – who we are.

Kestenbaum is the author of six books of poems, most recently “Things Seemed to Be Breaking” (Deerbrook Editions 2021), and served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021. He lives on Deer Isle.

Apprentice
By Stuart Kestenbaum

When I would walk to work in Portland,
the first light appeared over the horizon
of islands and ocean, casting long shadows
on the windows of the 19th-century warehouses
along the wharves, my own lengthened shadow
stretching over the red brick sidewalk,
as if we are more than one self, and maybe
we are: the one we were, the one we are
and the one we dream about.
Walking down the streets to the studio,
the herring gulls would wheel and cry overhead
in a brightening blue sky, a raucous noise
that even now for me is the sound of that
small city. That was the year I learned
to make pots, my foot kicking
the steel fly wheel, my hands centering clay
my fingers finding their way to the place
where the vessel could be opened.
It was a small miracle of transformation.
Back then I thought I knew what was next,
now all I see is the turning, the moving
into the light and turning around again.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Apprentice,” copyright 2023 by Stuart Kestenbaum, appears by permission of the author.