Shards

"It’s just a piece of pottery"
he said, flicking ash into the little bowl.
Blue and white, it was pretty
and she said it was old,
"Absolutely not to be used as an ashtray."

In a blue and white world
little children play, pigtails swinging.
Stones thrown might distract them,
not telephones ringing.

He imagines that a father buried this bowl with his son.
It might be his best rice dish in the after world.

Diggers make the earth move for a Disney theme park.
Unearthed jars and bowls bring in the traders,
all flesh to hungry sharks.

He inhales smoke, and a scent of earth.
The father would want the bowl left
where it laid for three hundred years.

He doesn’t want to know how she got it
or how much she paid.

He exhales in slow curls.
"It’ll do as an ashtray," he mutters.

"It’s probably Ming," she shrieks. "Ming! You idiot."
God, he was dim.