Lost and Found

In the house now burn fewer lights — one
near the window where nights she sits
with her knitting, soothing
as lanolin. She can’t even guess — socks?
A cap. Or scarf? A tea cozy?
The knitted folds that shawl her lap
spill either side of her knees, a pool
of loops intersecting loops. Stitches —
Who’s counting?

In a fairy tale, she might tell unfinished stories
for a thousand and one nights, might
grow her hair long as a tower
is tall. (A receiving blanket?
An afghan for the day bed maybe.) She would ride
on the backs of beavers needling upstream
to knit themselves a hearth from whatever’s
at hand. She would become the beaver.

Her shrewd hands assume the wit
to stem a breach at the sound of water
seeping. Over long weeks,
her light burns, and waves of knitted folds
pond the floor. The day she finally looks up,
it’s not a cap or sweater spread before her,
but a lodge cozy. An acreage. A wide, still water.

— With thanks to KW
Originally published in The Briar Cliff Review
as “Losing the Count, Regaining the World”