Working with Clay

Like the imprint
of my two thumbs in clay,
so you appear, my Lord,
by what you leave behind.

Disguised
in the tracery of fingerprint,
the whorls a world
of delicate, true lines,
you are revealed.

You mark me deeper still,
that imprint, too, indelible.
You say
you’d know me anywhere
by that mark—yours—
in me.

Those thumbprints
leave a trail,
like deer tracks in wet earth,
(What passed this way?)
delicate,
four-hooved, aloof,
shy of being named.

Or
like a mussel shell
pried open,
broken, free,
its heart revealed.
I am revealed, O Lord,
within your hand,
your mark in me.

—Stephanie Weller Hanson