It is a strange yet familiar thing – when I stitch, I can hear a poet speaking. This happens when I paint and sometimes when I weave. And always as I walk on well-trodden paths around my neighborhood.
Perhaps when I take up my needle, it becomes a conductor’s baton, cueing up words that flow in story fashion, rich and curling words which I find quite difficult to record. For at the moment I set down my needle and fabric to go fetch a piece of paper for dictation, the words stop. When I’ve returned to write down the effortless words I had heard, I am halting and stumbling over the paper trying to remember, even though my pen is full of ink.
With a sigh I resume stitching and once I’m lost in fields of stitch and texture, I hear her again, speaking softly of breezes and wildflowers, trees and birds and memories…so many memories. I shall find a small notebook to carry in my stitching box. This may help me capture the Poet’s words more fully and stitch them down.
It grew there –
golden, solitary, alone.
No other of its kind.
Light emanating from its center
and all the world around
Tremoling in its presence.
***
Yet I knew
Just as soon as it had grown
it would be done.
Complete yet also finished.
To start its withering journey to the ground
And rise again another day.
-jpe
