Self-Portrait | Knitting.

...inspired by this poem:

Knitting

When are you coming back to stand in front of the window?
(I heard you whistling last night. Cars pass me by all day,

waves circling the enormous globe.)
So much is left out, I'm knitting a pattern without

stitches, without needles, only long fingerbones
to carry yarn. There was something buried

the night I left Eau Claire for good, and I never knew
how it would grow. Now your childhood friends

are my students, I walk past houses you lived in
without my knowledge and your scent trails

from abandoned bakeries. Whole warehouses
have been invented to catalogue want like this.

I go on knitting night and day because I don't know
any other thing. All unknits by darkness

into twine birds use piece by piece. What secret
name can I call you? What adventure are you on tonight?

There is forgetting in the density of raw new wool,
yarn shop one block from your apartment,

the cheap scarf--you don't value things
because you never make them. Moon over the whitening work

sharpens spindle, windowframe. The sash
is pulled, seam is set: without material, there is no map.

~éireann lorsung, from music for landing planes by