WOOLEN DIGNITY
The needle between her fingers
came to a pause as she smoothed
the seams of her life and lingered
over old threads of truth
she had stitched with her own hands
and bitten off her with her own mouth,
noticing how these had blended
with and become part of the cloth,
until her dimmed eyes could not tell
in the fading light which was which.
There was not much of the garment left
to mend, although the remembering hid
what there was and changed the facts
of dark wool to the brighter silk
of summers past, when she had matched
her wardrobe to her hopes and risked
the need for later alterations,
unmindful how both would grow outstyled
and she herself become a pattern
of an age more pitied than admired.
Again the needle swayed and she sighed
at its impatience, as though it cared
that wool wear a rocking-chair pride
with dignity, as though an air
of mutual warmth existed between
her and the winter which would help them
keep what little vanity remained,
and the thread grew taut again,
leaving the stitches along the seam
smooth and even as her last defense.