I just knit an intricate intarsia pattern (look that up if you don’t know what it is) of cats and then undid it all. That’s my MO lately — knit, unravel, reknit, unravel. Ugh. This must be a sign of something to come? Some preparation for blooming?
Spring Fever
begins with an itchy nose, the tissues
swelling, air scratching, pollen rising, tides
of cat hair drifting into puff balls
around the dirty house.
Now come snow squalls
to punctuate our waiting,
and stiff wet winds drilling into
bared skulls,
mud, basement water, and pale legs
sprouting like white asparagas
from the hopeful shorts of
the very young.
The neighborhood dogs
maintain high alert
in their front yards, eager
to smell our stuffy houses on us.
So it makes no sense to me,
every year, when this cloud of
cranky unforgivingness
settles over me like dust,
invisible seeds of despair
that hold me down in ghostly
paralysis, a mute woman
refusing to leave her parked car.
What is wrong with me?
Isn't this a time to open my windows?
To step out of my hermetic stillness
and join the moving universe,
joyful and unafraid?
To send out new shoots?
But even this poem feels, right now,
like another locked room.
