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Dave Bonta
Two needles knitting and not an eye between them.
Click click, the path turns in upon itself,
a field of knots.
This is the sound an eyetooth makes
before it breaks.
Bodies aren’t as finished as we think.
A third eye can open anywhere.
Certain navels allure
with a permanent wink.
There’s hardly a part of the body
that can’t learn vision, clock stopped
at the center of a hurricane,
all-seeing shape that plays for keeps.
It shines.
It weeps.
The first thimble was the tanned hide
of an enemy’s thumb. Whisky
had yet to be invented, but
needles were employed as lances
in desperate finger-to-finger combat.
Battlefields were so numerous,
they were stacked into other battlefields
like Russian dolls. Soon, brass
was pressed into use, & one armorer
began dimpling the surface
to ward off smallpox.
Prostitutes made their Johns (then
still called Jacks) wear thimbles
on every finger, because who knew
where those hands had been?
Meanwhile they were measuring ale
record going around,
room full of music-
I have forgotten the needle!
There is nothing new in what is said
By either a needle or a thread :
Stitch, says a needle, Stitch, says the thread:
Stitch for the living; stitch for the dead;
All seams measure the same.
Garb for the living is light and gay.
While that for the dead is a shrouding grey.
But all things match on a later day
When little worm-stitches in the clay
Finish all seams the same.
A needle has no memories;
Less than the stir of frozen trees,
Than unheard rain falling on stone,
Are the seams that it has known.
I am sewing out my sorrow,
Like a thread, wearing it thin;
It will be old and frayed to-morrow.
Needle, turn out; needle, turn in.
Sorrow's thread is a long thread.
Needle, one stitch; needle, two.
And sorrow's thread is a strong thread,
But I will wear it through.
Then not only will sorrow
Be old and thin and frayed;
But I shall have to-morrow
Something sorrow has made.
My needle's thread is long and slow;
As a needle goes a thread must go,
And lame and blind a needle is,
Weighed with a mood's profundities.
My needle's thread is long and slack;
A thread must travel a needle's track.
And a needle leads an aimless course
Labouring against the force
Of gathering thought . . .
A needle's thread will not be taut
When every stitch is made to feel
Pressure upon the needle's steel
Of coldly flowing reality.
Fluent as waters that find the sea.
My needle's thread is long and slack;
A needle is foiled and driven back
A needle running in white crepe de chine
Is not the frail servant of utility
It was designed to be;
It is an arrow of silver sunlight
Plunging with a waterfall.
And hands moving in white crepe de chine
Are not slaves of the precedent
That governs them;
They are the crouching women of a fountain,
Who have sprung from marble into life
To bathe ecstatically
In the brimming basin.
Needle, you make me remember things . .
A path through a wood that ran like wine,
A turn, and the bubbling smell that clings
Close as breath to the lips of springs
Where the sun is sprinkled fine.
Needle, you have a path to run
Where never the boughs of trees have met
And never has seeped the rain of the sun;
But long is the way you have just begun . .
Needle, you make me forget.
Needle, running in and out,
In and out, in and out.
Do you know what you're about,
In and out, in and out?
Fingers, going to and fro,
To and fro, to and fro.
Do you know the path you go.
To and fro, to and fro?
I might tell you why you're taking
Such good stitches: You are making
Out of linen, fine as breaking
Ocean-spray upon a bluff,
Pleating for a Bishop's cuff!
I might make you understand
That a Bishop's white, white hand,
Because of you, will be more fair,
When the dawn unfolds like a bolt of ribbon
Thrown through my window,
I know that hours of light
Are about to thrust themselves into me
Like omnivorous needles into listless cloth,
Threaded with the heavy colours of the sun.
They seem altogether too eager
To embroider this thing of mine,
My Day,
Into the strict patterns of an altar cloth;
Or at least to stitch it into a useful garment.
But I know they will do nothing of the kind.
They will prick away.
And when they are through with it
It will look like the patch quilt my grandmother made
When she was learning to sew.
I was sewing a seam one day —
Just this way —
Flashing four silver stitches there
With thread, like this, fine as a hair.
And then four here, and there again,
When
The seam I sewed dropped out of sight
I saw the sea come rustling in,
Big and grey, windy and bright . . .
Then my thread that was as thin
As hair, tangled up like smoke
And broke.
I threaded up my needle, then —
Four here, four there, and here again.