Would that wool’d not cared for 

the callous. The weave and the

braid are one and the same. 

Stroked into myth, the pattern 

brings you home. So the claim 

goes. Not quite, the knit sinks, too.

The work is in the work.

The side of your face

is warm with candlelight.

This is everything: half-shadow / half-light.

Watch from the window. Wait out the wind.

The sea is many a wall of sound.

Burrow into worry, bury your bad dreams

in the backyard. Maybe they will

grow up later.

Forget the tremble, the shudder

of the shutters, whatever wages out

-side, wages on. Rain as fingers, 

fingertips, fingernails. Rough hands 

palm and press, push flat the wool.

Spools of thread at the foot

of the bed. 

What are you kneading?

The loom splinters in

the corner. The moon. 

Palms full of pins + needles. 

Like alms. Outside the water

is pooling. The grass is fraying out

in the storm. The room gets warm, 

warmer as the yarn is passed around. 

So much breath for everyone.

And if there were children, 

they would pant in anticipation,

waiting their turn for the good 

ending.

Birds. A single gull waits with a mouth wide open. Hungry in hoping.

Slope away into the sea. All my bridges lean into the sea. 

Slant. Hearing chanting back back back telling you

to slacken the rope, pull the boat back. 

Then you tie it to the iron on the rock. 

The knot is not Gordian¹, but it is good enough.²

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¹ Afternoons spent sieving through sand searching for seaglass. Whalers sailors & their bottles of beer. All shards come amber. Long island beach mottled forgotten with bottles & the bodies of old bonfires. The wayward sailors would float but are weighed down by all the coins in their shoes. & their fists sea-frozen shut if pried open would thaw in relief releasing many pennies & gold bottlecaps. Though very heavy they look like light sleepers. Mouths open wide. If they were not buried so deep a crab could crawl out. 

² If you swim out to the deep end If the waves your body bend If found blue & beached & If they find you too The pattern the grammar the thick knit of it will land you I promise back to me.