Six at the Beginning Again

means:
Hold to him in truth and loyalty;
This is without blame.
Truth, like a full earthen bowl:
Thus in the end
Good fortune comes from without.

-– I Ching

Love was, I thought, a fire
you set, or failed to set.
Those cold nomadic years,
scouring sand beneath
my feet, I hunted the earthen
bowl, fragile and lovely,

watching Ezekiel's wheel
turn the sky awake. But I
was wrong to think love was
fortune sprung from within,
deservingness stored up so
God could see. It was luck,

all of us fortune-cursed or bit
or blessed. One morning I woke
with the bowl in my hands,
this lover come from where?
Hold to him in truth and
loyalty. This is without blame.

-- Deborah Bogen