Recurring Dream of the Revolving Door

The revolving door
Paddled its flat hands through space, like a clock,
But widdershins, orbiting the floor

At the pace of an adult’s brisk walk.
You were four, or very small,
And prone to race or balk,

And skittered ahead into the tall
Diminishing wedge
Of air and light, leaving me to push a wall

Between us, both on edge.
Before you, a hectic street, and strangers,
Behind you, the verge

Of panic, yours and mine, the dizzy dangers
Of propulsion, staying still, worst, turning back.
The body’s anguish is its angers.

This is how Demeter felt, not the lack,
But helplessness at close range, through glass,
As her daughter entered the almanac

And love turned impasse,
Rearing against momentum until
The inevitable succumbed to mother-mass

For a moment. Just so I braced against the mill,
Its endless peopled deluge,
That briefly you could twinkle and spill

Clock-wise now over the unforgiving, huge
Entrance/exit, a stutter of doubt
In time’s centrifuge

That spins and separates. I fetched you out
Almost before where we had started
In the threshing roundabout

Together as only those who have been parted.



Projects

So many women friends
Have shown me half-finished elaborate knitting
Drawn out of bags or plastic bins,

A Faire-Isle sleeve, an Aran cable
Intricate as the illumination
Of the first letter of a velum Celtic bible,

The turned heel on a solo sock, yet
Bristling with double-pointed needles,
The lace corner of an aborted blanket,

Cumuli of organic Alpaca tangled
In untidy skeins, clews of Merino
Wool, or silk hand-spun, nubbed, the spangled

Subtle filament
Of plied ambition, of love perfected,
Of perfect accomplishment.

O dye-lot
Doomed, count lost, the fiddly pattern
Slatterned through the fingers – fateful knot. Why not

Pick it up again? How does forever
Unwind from one interruption,
Unfurling the frayed never

Into the intricate rigging? Costly stuff –
What journeys into beauty the mind projects
That the disobedient hands will not cast off.



A Baby Sweater (for Camilla)

I’d rather knit than write,
Casting a count of stitches
On bamboo needles, feeling
Wool pull over finger ridges,

Paying out the line
Into the ocean of air
As if to fetch up something
Nobody knew was there.

I love that the dropped stitch
Four rows now descended
With its little moth-gnawed flaw
Can be picked up, and mended,

I love the hollow garment,
The space for chest and arms,
The holes that make the buttons fast,
Patterns like magic charms

Numbering, back and forth,
Purl, knit, purl,
Sage-green for a boy, perhaps
Or lavender for a girl,

And how, when it’s done, you wash it
Gently, like a live thing,
In luke-warm water, with mild shampoo,
And it’s heavy, and smells of Spring.

And it might be an heirloom,
Or maybe ravel and pill,
This fashioned, useful emptiness
Somebody will fill.