woof from warp.

The rule is, if I read it eight times and still feel compelled to share it, I share it. Enjoy.

Invisible Mending

c.k. williams

Three women old as angels,

bent as ancient apple trees,

who, in a storefront window,

with magnifying glasses,

needles fine as hair, and shining

scissors, parted woof from warp

and pruned what would in

human tissue have been sick.

Abrasions, rents and frays,

slits and chars and acid

splashes, filaments that gave

way of their own accord

from the stress of spanning

tiny, trifling gaps, but which

in a wounded psyche

make a murderous maze.

Their hands as hard as horn,

their eyes as keen as steel,

the threads they worked with

must have seemed as thick

as ropes on ships, as cables

on a crane, but still their heads

would lower, their teeth bare

to nip away the raveled ends.

Only sometimes would they

lift their eyes to yours to show

how much lovelier than these twists

of silk and serge the garments

of the mind are, yet how much

more benign their implements

than mind's procedures

of forgiveness and repair.

And in your loneliness you'd notice

how really very gently they'd take

the fabric to its last, with what

solicitude gather up worn edges

to be bound, with what severe

but kind detachment wield

their amputating shears:

forgiveness, and repair.

serendipity in super slow music.

This week held one of those lucky moments listening to a song you've known for ages but suddenly hear for the first time. The doubly lucky part is hearing the words you needed right at the moment the song decides to stop letting you ignore it.

The melody moves so slowly - borderline boringly - it never held my attention. But when my ears caught "we are blessed aren't we", I waited for the rest. Amid the throes of a seemingly endless quarter-life crisis, these words are a breath of fresh air. No answers, and who would look for those? Life finds its own answers. All we need along the way, sometimes, is for someone to say so.


Hands in black mud
At the foot of the manger
She'll always be young

And free to be wrong
A black lamb licks the dirt off her feet with its tongue

We are blessed aren't we
In the shade of these large auburn leaves
Unexpectedly
We arrive where we're all meant to be

Hands in black mud
As she sits by the manger
And closes her eyes

The wind blows outside
A black car pulls the gravel and wants her to ride

We are blessed aren't we
In the shade of these large auburn leaves
Unexpectedly
We arrive where we're all meant to be

oh lovely.

It's pouring - BUCKETS - rain outside. Pounding on the roof, flooding the courtyard. I'm in soft old clothes, listening. Earlier tonight I lost five consecutive pool games really, really pathetically and watched the world look a little less confusing over hot spicy whiskey cider. Smoked good cigarettes under the awning, watching the rain pour down. Lovely night. Hope yours was too.