
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.
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