no more does my mother knit
half finished scarves, tea cosies
and tiny shell like booties
sit in forlorn piles
awaiting a hand that
is no longer deft
or interested

her conversation is now not
accompanied by the soft rhythmic
clicking of needles, tapping away
we are no longer halted in questions
by the phrase"just let me finish the row"

now, pattern books are filed away
wool paased on to others for their projects
groups of women no longer gather

my mothers hands lay idle and listless
in her lap, finger bent and curled
in painful submission  to age

she is some how smaller, diminished
as tho the k itting needles gave her strength
to battle to stand stoic, against the tides of misfortune
that battered the island that was her life...

my mother no longer knits
and in me that creates a sadness
that is deeper than words explain
and often as I sit with her
I long to here that rhythmic clicking
that was the back ground to my childhood

knit one purl one.....