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
A Poet's Indulgence 