Woven

It was the weft and wop of the weave, pulled
over my knee, muscles and tendons that
repaired my split thigh, a pattern, the surgeon said,
a kind of living fabric that carries me forward,
the way that robin thatches its nest or the swallow
threads a home in the wall vines, even the spider
who deftly catches the sunlight in its dew,
which reminds me of the Cherokee legend of
Spider-Dwelling-in-The Water who wove
a basket to bring fire to the peoples, a pattern
still used today with river cane and white oak,
sometimes honeysuckle whose twines bend
and gather the way this poem gathers one thread
then another, trying to discover an end it hasn’t
predicted, like, say, an astronomer piecing together
dark and visible matter to discover our final
fate, or the explorer finding a lost Mayan city
amidst the jungle, the idea being we are all,
as physics tells us, entangled, like the way we
thread discrete stars to make one constellation,
or how trees help each other through their roots,
the whole cosmos gathering itself, headed, as
Teilhard de Chardin wrote, towards a mystical
convergence with whatever is beyond us—
something we need to believe in these chaotic
times where hate seems to prune all hope,
which is maybe what that French weaver knew,
what the music of Cherokee Hope is singing,
what the stars have always tried to tell us, and
yes, what that robin has been trying to say all morning.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Number 3. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.