To Ply
Rachel Linnea Brown
I gather
a fistful of roving—
guttural bleats, wobble-legged
searching after fat pink teats—
silence as my mother’s shuttle
crosses her warp—the pattern
in weave, her whirring fingers—
and drop
my spindle again—
afterbirth I mistook for a lamb
and its legs I folded into earth
after years—yellow lawn chairs
rounding the grave my mother
and I dug in our rooted field.
I will twist into cream
and gray and moorit skeins—
and tuck all
away from moths and dust
for my eventual, casting on—
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a fistful of roving—
guttural bleats, wobble-legged
searching after fat pink teats—
silence as my mother’s shuttle
crosses her warp—the pattern
in weave, her whirring fingers—
and drop
my spindle again—
afterbirth I mistook for a lamb
and its legs I folded into earth
after years—yellow lawn chairs
rounding the grave my mother
and I dug in our rooted field.
I will twist into cream
and gray and moorit skeins—
and tuck all
away from moths and dust
for my eventual, casting on—