With my torn jeans and dirty face,

skittish as a barn cat,

I needed someone

who’d take me in hand.

It was my grandmother

who taught me to knit

wool from lambs

she raised to sheep.

In the quiet of her farmhouse,

she helped me cast on

into the realm of soft clicking,

elbows moving up and down

like bellows breathing.

I learned the delicate dip and dive

of needles and the patient way

to stockinet, garter, seed.

How not to drop a stitch.

Now a neighbor child

whose mother says can’t sit still

comes for lessons from me.

Her feet don’t reach the floor

but the scarf on her needles

grows long.

After we finish the lesson,

we go out on the back porch

and bark and howl, as I did

with my grandmother who said: 

Calm down a little

but don’t get prissy.