NEEDLE AND THREAD

I don’t sew. Not the way some people do.

I can make no sense of patterns

or the machines that look like they will sew your finger to the table.

But I sew.

Buttons and hems, a rip in a sheet.

Not often, but when I do

there comes a gentle softness of simplicity

and memory.

Sewing a button today and

I am six years old

prick-prick-pricking the needle up from underneath

in blind search of a hole.

Convent needlework classes

taught me things I still own

like the tidy 3-point stitch just for hems

and the deft move that lands a knot right at the end of your thread.

I do a small repair today,

bringing out the sewing box I assembled

a couple decades ago at the beginning of some new life,

and I am sitting in the garden in Athens

hemming linen napkins

pretending to be invalid to stay out of the fray.

I am glad for this consistency of sewing.

Each time I return

It is the same.

They might say boys should sew their own buttons.

OK.

But I would miss this corner of ability and accomplishment and peace.