Crochet

by Jan Mordenski

Even after darkness closed her eyes 

my mother could crochet. 

Her hands would walk the rows of wool 

turning, bending, to a woolen music.

The dye lots were registered in memory: 

appleskin, chocolate, porcelain pan, 

the stitches remembered like faded rhymes: 

pineapple, sunflower, window pane, shell.

Tied to our lives those past years 

by merely a soft colored yarn, 

she’d sit for hours, her dark lips 

moving as if reciting prayers, 

coaching the sighted hands.