Crochet, a hook and one set of fingers

curling and coiling a hesitant confection

in thread that will stand up on its own.

Not lace, but lacy, the effort

scrunching up your face, the making

of making in your short-sighted eye.

Potential. How before you begin,

it is clambering clean and forever.

You seem to detach from the chair

from the room from the world we are in

when you pull intent out of air.

Might it be a welcome, set under two glasses

of scotch on a bedside table? Might it be

a collar laid over yoke like a nun’s

from a convent in France? Could it

muster charity while calling

the willing eye to prayer? They told you

lace that is not lace will not seduce.

You smooth a medieval dark down

through its gaps, stemming the curlicue

loop, its interweaving.

The twist of a flaw, that disappointment,

how not to use it, the better to strengthen

the whole, that would be the cliche,

and this is lace if not yet lacy.

……

from Heat Signature, http://www.serenbooks.com