poem

Knot Work

(After Ann Hamilton)

Cotton-knotted and witch-white, I'm woven

and worn, fingers thread bare from knot talk,

each plaiting a melody, how I weave a story --

hand-made and mended to the sure-footed--

my lace work a dance, its filaments link

] what's to eat-where's shirt-lunch-home [

form to form. I read knots to decipher

how words pleat like rain over avenue and field.

Forever weaving and unweaving, I study

light's texture in knuckle work: the felt,

the clenched, the cottony stress

of noun, the vagary of verb.

Word-filled, they chatter, their tangled syntax

] worm holes there are holes worm [

warping my knotty grammar,

my embroidered eloquence.

I'm wrought from not-talk, blah-blah

knit into a day's topography.

] feminine chit-chat [

O binary language, memory's ligature strewn

across a table, unmake and unknot 

me as darkness loosens its strands

and blue dawn wounds the sky.

] no worry     stitch in      time to tapestry [

O code of twist and fringe, you are sutured truth -- all lashed and looped

] cloth -- be still I'll talk [

and chattering like old rags.