Ellen Sander

Repair

for Claire Millikin Raymond

A hole in the red cashmere stretches,

more fray, the strands’ surrender.

One flaw in the entire jumper. A puka.

Let to grow, it’ll eat the whole thing. And

if noticed, what?  Shame?  Sloth?

The needle is curved, wide slit for floss.

In and out, a weave, stitches a bit off-kilter

but every turn tighter until the last

in/under, two loops and a skinny knot.

Colors merge, the stitches pinch,

a barely perceptible dimpled

wrinklet in time, imperfect

evidence of how I can’t let go of damage.

With so much wrong, it helps to mend

even something small, in a world so mean

that ravel and unravel mean the same.

A native New Yorker, Ellen Sander came to Belfast, Maine from Bolinas and L.A.  by way of Beijing, and was the Poet Laureate of Belfast in 2013 and 2014. In the first pack of writers in the 1960s to invent and establish rock journalism, she's the author of Trips: Rock Life in the Sixties, a widely cited chronicle/memoir of those times recently reissued in an augmented edition by Dover Publications. Her most recent poetry book is Aquifer, published by Red Bird Chapbooks.  Hawthorne, A House In Bolinas, a poetic memoir, is published by Finishing Line Press.