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.