Blind Woman Knitting

A blind woman is boarding the subway,

And everyone makes way for her,

Someone rising evenly to take her arm

And put her in his seat, all as if

Rehearsed, before the doors close.

My hand starts bending words about her.

The whites flash in the seams of her eyes

As she settles in almost angrily,

To knit quickly, with her chin down,

And her cane on her chest like the cane

An old man forgets, dozing in the park,

His lips fluted, his brow working,

As if he is about to talk in his sleep.

Even in pitch dark we can see all things.

I drive in the woods at night, choke

The headlights, and oaks suddenly catch

On the faint stripes of their shadows,

As quickly as I now catch a girl

With a magnifying glass studying

The square codes on her sampler diagram,

And a woman with wide uneven eyes,

Drawing her left hand with her fight hand,

So close together the sketched fingers

Reach for the flesh ones, as if back toward

The mirroring skill that separated them.

Both women consider their objects ardently.

We wait for the suburbs, where the train

Rises from under the ground and crosses

Into the shuttling sunlight.

When the needles stop, her index finger continues,

Pushing up the knots, counting down

In little hops to the end of the row.

She props her work against her knees

Like a book she alternately writes, then reads.

In her hands loud colors are meeting

At right angles, the square filling

Her lap and then spilling over,

Touching the person in the next seat,

Who shifts and touches the next...

In fact she keeps it neatly to herself,

So the shadow she is seated in deepens,

Dark as undivided night. A moonless night.

32