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Making
I thought I was moving on
but all of us are rooted like child labor
to something assigned, humming
like bees. We don't, of course, know why
or even how we work.
All those long days, years,
the fast version of things
slips through the fingers, smooth,
clear patterns tumbling from rattling looms:
grandmothers, babies, wars, soup,
hickory nuts and wet leaves, whole towns,
crowds of faces, close calls, love's hot
start and the rush to begin again.
All this time it's been running,
the fabric beginning to thin, coursing
more like thought than like material
until it thickens once, a selvage, done.
Then we are freed of all design.
By then, the wind, shroudmaker,
can carry all I am.
I may sing across stones, drift
over the blue domes and white houses
of one small Greek island forever,
foreign and perfectly at home.
Memory weighs nothing. Our intricate
finished product
can vanish into light.
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