Knitting
She taught me how to cast on, knit, purl,
but all I ever made were misshapen scarves,
rows of too few, too many stitches and when it was long
enough, I could never remember how
to cast off, like a highway whose exit
was closed. Her sweaters had thick
foldable collars and button-holes, her blanket
throws had textured panels in raised cabled rows.
“I just follow the pattern,” she said.
I became someone who didn’t make things.
I wonder if I was afraid of being good.
*
Lynn Glicklich Cohen is a poet from Milwaukee, WI. A once-upon-a-time social worker, a perennial cellist and semi-retired Rolfer, her poems have been published in Brushfire Literature and Arts Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, Cantos, El Portal, Evening Street Review, Front Range Review, Grand Journal, Oberon, ONE ART, Peregrine, The Midwest Quarterly, The Phoenix, The Red Wheelbarrow, St. Katherine’s Review, Thin Air Magazine, Trampoline, Whistling Shade, and others. lynnglicklichcohenpoet.com
