New Single & A Poem
Hi Everyone
Its an exciting week. The second single from A Great Wild Mercy is now available on Spotify! You can hear the song Potluck here! Its a celebration of community, caring and welcoming us all to the table. I hope you’ll check it out and share. There is also a fun video that was created with video and photographs from the Potluck recording sessions. If you are a supporting subscriber you’ll recognize some of the photos that were shared during the project :-)
Serial Reading - One Stitch At A Time
Welcome to my serial poetry readings from my three books of poetry. This poem was written while traveling and touring in Europe. I walked into a knit shop in Hanover Germany. The shop woman honestly wasn’t super friendly when I came it. Maybe it was a bad day or her dog was sick, or I didn’t speak the language and I was a stranger. But sometimes if we can stay open, appreciative, there is the possibility of finding thread, we can see what is shared-maybe even sense where we connect even across differences. It can be like that with songs and poems, they can be a bit of unveiled, unguarded empathy. It can be like that when two people who really appreciate the feel of good quality yarn.
Niall Williams wrote “It seems to me the quality that makes any book, music, painting worthwhile is life, just that. Books, music, painting are not life, can never be as full, rich, complex, surprisng or beautiful…but the best of them can catch an echo of that, can turn you back to look out the window, go out the door aware that you’ve been enriched, that you have been in the company of something.”
In that little knit shoppe, I took a step forward and held out my appreciation for something the clerk also deeply appreciated. It was a bit like the weaving of soft dyed wool between two knitting needles. It doesn’t always happen in an instant. It takes being willing to see where the thread goes, and following it through.
Anyway…this poem is about the importance of things that can only be created one stitch, one moment, one step at a time - like a knitted scarf, a walk, a friendship, a full and nuanced lifetime. Its also about what happens when we open a space and welcome something shared, something beautiful, something that connects.
The Knitting Shoppe I finger the yarn, Checking its strength and quality, Comparing the weights and colors. The shop keeper watches me, Unsure and unconvinced. I am a foreign woman in a foreign land, Possessing only the barest words of her language. I pick up a particularly beautiful skein. It is soft and obviously hand-dyed. And sighing the sigh of true appreciation I meet her eyes and breathe, "sehr schön” “Very lovely." She stops, Then beams, Proud that the quality Of the material she loves Transcends. We nod in agreement As women (and knitters) will sometimes do, With shared understanding Of the humble importance Of simple Useful things Which can only be created One stitch at a time.
Question: Have you ever experienced a situation when a shared appreciation created a connection? What has been your experience with things that can only be done one stitch at a time?
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