Poet's Corner: Crocheting's inner sight
May 24, 2010
Comment by Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate, 2004-06

We are sometimes amazed by how well the visually impaired navigate the world, but like the rest of us, they have found a way to do what interests them. Here Jan Mordenski of Michigan describes her mother, absorbed in crocheting.

Crochet

Even after darkness closed her eyes
my mother could crochet.
Her hands would walk the rows of wool
turning, bending, to a woolen music.

The dye lots were registered in memory:
appleskin, chocolate, porcelain pan,
the stitches remembered like faded rhymes:
pineapple, sunflower, window pane, shell.

Tied to our lives those past years
by merely a soft colored yarn,
she'd sit for hours, her dark lips
moving as if reciting prayers,
coaching the sighted hands.

"American Life in Poetry" is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 1995 by Jan Mordenski and reprinted from Quiet Music: A Plainsong Reader (Plainsong Press, 1995) by permission of Jan Mordenski and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2010 by The Poetry Foundation. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

For a free iPhone app containing 1400 complete poems go here.

Go Back

Comments

You are currently not logged in. If you wish to post a comment, please first log in.

 ThreadAuthorViewsRepliesLast Post Date

No comments yet.