The Making

He browses sewing notions. A tattooed man, skinny jeans,
a gentle lean. Between the thread display, hanging rulers,
chalk markers, yellow rotary cutters, pins.

It’s a witchy place: around tables, chatting, stitching, silent,
under and over, wood, metal, sharp points. As if around a fire.
Cooking it up. Stirring: a woman’s world.

He reaches out, chooses a wooden hoop. Embroidery.

Hope blows down aisles, through bolts of fabric, twisted skeins.
Alpaca, Shetland, hand-dyed, handspun. Sits itself down on worn
couches around a table stacked with craft magazines, low to the floor.

He picks a pattern.

Hope is in the making. Natural as wheat and corn and woven mats.

Slow.

Like the whale’s open mouth, wide and still, where fish gather
inside not sensing movement until the mighty jaw rises to close.

Emily Scudder is the author of Feeding Time (Pecan Grove Press) and chapbooks, Natural Instincts and A Change of Pace (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in Harvard Review, Agni Online, Margie, New Letters, Harpur Palate, Salamander, North Dakota Quarterly, Ethel Zine, and other places. Visit her online at www.emilyscudder.com