For The Sunday Muse prompt #40 and The Sunday Whirl Wordle 388. In The Middle of Freedom, Image Source.

***
My fingers mould the pliant clay
beneath the surface of this puddle
into an image of a memory; each
mound of earth rubbed round between
my fingers a portion of a story emerging
like birds set free from a gilded cage.
The memory is a chain anchoring
the fluid present to the stable past.
It pulses like a thing that lives –
somehow more alive with freedom
than at first it would seem.