Alyson Gold Weinberg

A Poem

ARS PANDEMICA

Stitching left to right then right to left, 

engaging both hands and both spheres, 

the mind grows quiet, the hands come alive 

with color and softness, the repetition 

of movement. It’s soothing, knitting.

The pressures of the present fall away like waves,

pull back to ties that bind to Mother,

to ocean. Pull Penelope back and forth 

to her loom, for three years in and out

of her room to undo daylight.

Weaving is not so easy to unravel.

Knitting is knots and needles. Tangles

of blues that somehow something become.

Penelope weaves and unweaves the shroud

for Laertes. She passes the time counting

stiches, not millions of minutes, un-bids

goodbye to Odysseus with each row unbinds

her work, rebinds herself to him, to Ithaca,

to a world that was and can be again.

No one can make her let go.

Penelope can make it never be so

by rending the very garment she’s sewn.

Raveling and unraveling mean the same thing.

Here I am, 

dashed against the rocks of a city that burns,

in a world that still turns, but barely. I am the new

Penny, who knits and unknits to shore

up her footing. In this cold time, 

I make and unmake scarves to warm 

the hearts of people I love. My wrists, 

my fingers burn and ache—my work

imperfect, to rough, too bright, and not soft

enough. The stitches I make I must

pull out, one by one in one long motion. I must remake what is broken. 

I must sadness push and pull away

with hands deep in knots. With mind 

cleared of troubling thoughts. With hands 

I remember the pleasure of things. 

I remember the art of losing, the art 

of knitting—like poetry, on blank space,

embroidering a story—no back space, no back space

— distracting from loss, tending the presence of love, 

forever ending a line by beginning the next one.

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