For Adeline
I don't do poetry, but I wrote this for Lauren's granny, who died a few weeks ago.
Threads.
For Adeline
My grandmother taught me to knit.
Or was it Brown Owl? Perhaps Mrs Pritchard,
With her horn-rimmed glasses and grey hair?
Maybe they all cast on for me alternately, until it caught.
Memory and love are like knitting. Starts, false and otherwise,
A tentative cast on, half-forgotten lines, the weaving back and forth.
And oh, the work, what joy to thread, to tread those lines, those lanes.
The ribbing and the strands, connection, pattern, creation, hope.
What luck and love and passion in every stitch and step.
What hours, forgotten and remembered, pass in peace.
I spin the yarns of my ancestors; I knit the future.
I am a moment, not a memory. I am a slub in a long thread.
But time and circumstance will tear my work.
Darning is a fool’s game. I will worry the loose ends,
The secret textures and colours adversity pulls out.
I will weave them back in like flags, like songs of praise.
Then, my homely work will be a riot of colour, a tapestry of discordant
Voices singing in unison, in the memory of my secret heart.
This thing I’ve made is meant to be worn, to be loved, to be worn out.
Wear me out, too, like my stitches, until we fall exhausted together
Into a heap of fabric, warm as the beginning of memory.
Hold me up where my memory fails; be my record keeper.
Grieve with me at the end of the world, when cast off comes
And all the knitting and purling are done, and the needles still.
She wasn’t mine to call grandmother, but granny she was
To everybody. She knitted as long as her memory held.
She faded, oh so slowly out, like a blanket, washed too much.
She left me her patterns, and her sad granddaughter to love.
She left me her threads and her memory, too, and I will honour them,
I promise.
Beautiful - yes you do do poetry!
What a lovely piece of writing to remember her by. Rest in power Adeline
Lovely! Thank you!