Zest Lit Issue 2, October 2013 | Page 172

Wool Poem I | Joan Colby

Strewn over the hillsides

Like white cairns marking

How warmth can be carded

From the slow profusion of love.

Herded by dogs whose heredity

Propels to tasks of rounding off

The numbers. Fixing with the evil

Eye of a curse. Lying down

As lovers might insinuating how

To fluff a hide before the

Shearing. Abandoned one

Naked, shivering as the lost dream spins

On skeins wound and rewound

About the spindle of the wound.

Wool Poem II | Joan Colby

Pattern inherent in place.

Fingers ply the needles,

Cable, honeycomb, basket, diamond.

Knit and purl. Memory guides

Over moor and peat bog. Here’s

Where a slipped stitch left a hole

Of falsehood. Undyed to clothe

The men of Aran. Flimsy currachs

Bound for the mainland. How

Wet wool fingers the drowned.