Slipping Stitches

By A.E. Bayne

Her fingers like bobbins churning
slide yarn from point to point
(slip, wrap, finger, draw through, repeat).
Quicker than the eye her needles clack and scissor, weaving and weaving
(knit purl knit purl drop a stitch and carry to the back).
My hands on her hands, skin like iced tissue paper,
yarn warms them, moves the blood, no idle hands nor lost souls.
Eyes failing now,
she moves my fingers so like hers,
tiny and quick, she moves them with the needles
(nudge the tip through, hold it steady, wrap the yarn around, pull it through the loop).
You’ve moved the world.
Picking up speed, now a purse, some socks, mittens, silky scarves, a tam;
and now booties and a blanket for my boy a jumper for my boy a sweater for my boy.
Oh the patterns! The colors and textures that pass over two slender bodies,
the stitches lost and retrieved, weaving and dropping,
yanked clean out at times, then coming to rest with the others.
And all the while, even after thin fingers grow still,
even after joints grow too stiff to hold the needles,
her hands are my hands and in my hands, her hands, always.