I know we had a tough day yesterday. But, let me begin to mend us. One of the great things about last weekend was being able to get all the books I left behind. Books that I actually thought I had brought with me. Just before the South Country Fair I was looking everywhere for Jorie Graham’s book Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t find it. It would have let me know that I am not a poet.
Mother’s Sewing Box
In an old cookie tin, because
things last longer
in the dark.
She needs to be left alone.
Here are saved
the bits of string
too small to save, the eyes
of the needles.
On the string
the knots are birds that sit,
that cannot leave. The buttons
are wheels. Assemble them,
these uneven machines,
and they say, how much
for Effort, or, wait,
I’ve changed my mind,
I want to come along.
To disobey
is to hide or to be
unmended. Maybe you’ll find it,
she says after I’ve said
I don’t have, didn’t take,
her belongings.
The spools of thread
form a train. Swarms
of starling cry we are pins,
pins. We are going so fast.
Maybe you’ll
find it, maybe
you’ll find it, lazy susan
got a black eye. The needle,
covering its tracks,
makes a pattern
of its incisions, the pincushion
with its pocked body
snapped quills . . .
and if she isn’t gone
she lives there still.
I’ll hug you on Monday.
It’s Tuesday. Where’s the hug?
Too busy at work for hugging. :wacko_tb: