My Mother’s Ghost Knits a Scarf of Chain

My Mother’s Ghost Knits a Scarf of Chain

When I look up rust scabs flutter from your clicking
needles, subsuming even the brightest link in this
moon-drenched room. Communion’s possibility

perished in that wicker basket, and we hold close our
secrets, looped within circles, joined in these most hidden
stitches. Will you ever detach? I recall losing myself,

stepping from darkness into the white afternoon beyond the movie,
finding only strange faces on a street unraveling from
a wound I’d not yet felt. Now you pull apart the gatherings.

Yesterday’s scarf lies incomplete on the invisible shelf,
and tomorrow’s tightens uncomfortably around my throat,
even as I read aloud, proposing family life on a scale

we cannot duplicate, in a house lost long ago in a city
I’ve not yet seen, in a decade before my birth and a pearled
atmosphere of cleansing air into which my body longs to rise

but can’t, tethered in place by love, this terrible, beautiful love.

“My Mother’s Ghost Knits a Scarf of Chain,” was first published in Issue 14 of Panoply in January 202

14 thoughts on “My Mother’s Ghost Knits a Scarf of Chain”

Gorgeous, Bob.

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robert okaji on July 18, 2020 at 12:22 pm said:

Thanks, Cate. I’ve a couple others in this series still seeking publication. We’ll see what happens.

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Entirety is evocative … for me, especially: “Yesterday’s scarf lies incomplete on the invisible shelf,
and tomorrow’s tightens uncomfortably around my throat” – along with “tethered in place by love”
Though you present this as a dream, waking life too can tether one in place amid invisible shelves and tightening tomorrows. Thank you for this perspective arriving this day in my wish-it-were-a-dream life.

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robert okaji on July 18, 2020 at 12:24 pm said:

My former life was tethered in place too long. I understand your wish, and wish it were so.

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Hey there, Robert. Another awesome post. I’d love to reblog it, but can’t make the button work… so just checking, is it possible to reblog this?

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robert okaji on July 18, 2020 at 12:28 pm said:

Thanks, Anna Marie. Hmm. It should be possible to reblog, but I looked at the post and don’t see the reblog button. It’s a mystery. I reviewed my “share” settings, and the reblog button is on.

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- prairiepomes on July 18, 2020 at 3:22 pm said:
  
  There. Tried again, and it worked.
  
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  - robert okaji on July 19, 2020 at 12:04 pm said:
    
    Thank you!
    
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Talked to my parents yesterday. They’re in their eighties. Your poem captures a lot the feelings I experience: connection to a shared past and a desire to be free from memories that still hurt. Very poignant poem.

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