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Odin Roark, click here
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For me, having spent considerable time with my parents in nursing homes, I often found the experience very unpredictable, as if I were looking through a window witnessing an existence of life defying our normal perceptions, embracing instead their new world of expectation.
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Crocheting Eternity
Nursing homes know
arts and crafts
become valued visitors
some with smiles
some with hooded foreshadow
How tenuous
how earnest
mixed genders
sitting in circles
anxiously hooking
thick wool string
tendrils of perpetuity
threading dreams
shawls of protection
scarfs of statement
booties of tomorrow
Trees of life
now but withered branches
shedding leaves of time
by twig-like fingers
punctuating yesterday
with every hole by hole entry
every stitch by stitch attachment
allowing Age's changing colors
to float blithely
earthward
and beyond
Like observant wings on high
we can but gaze down upon
Time's swirling visions in slow motion
a vortex permitting but a glimpse
of our yet-to-come reality
For now
We ride the draft
peering safely from afar
as seasoned providence
weaves lessons into
what is still to come
Something long
Something wide
Something for remembering
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| Reviewed by Mr. Ed |
9/20/2012 |
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| Quite powerful and thought provoking. And having spent lots of time visiting relatives in nursing homes myself, not something I look forward to. |
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| Reviewed by Diana Legun |
9/19/2012 |
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| Odin, the pensive perception in this is ultra keen. It is, to me, a more positive than negative account of this aged stated of being. How often is the word 'crocheting' in a poem title...that caught my eyes right away. Connecting the 'doing' of the needle work to what you have it symbolizing is beautiful stethoscopic tuning-in. How you described twig-like fingers shedding leaves is a visual most impressive for anyone who has seen up close leathered, thin, veined, knotted, spotted aged fingers. Hole-by-hole surely matches your "punctuating" vision, as any reader having watched avid crochet action can envision those punch-down needle movements, like periods, commas, question marks. And naming the yarn articles in the making, as 'states of being', is wonderful. I like how you finish this with three lines that envoke potential instead of resignation. Beautiful write! ~~ Diana |
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| Reviewed by JASMIN HORST SEILER |
9/19/2012 |
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| Surely you lived it through them, in your most apt description of time,all of us knitting our way to what's to come, in one way or the other; your knitting of poetry, knit one, pearl one, well done, bravo! |
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