Sheila Hassell Hughes

She´s turning forty and she hopes
the next twenty-five years will be better
than the last.

Knuckles swollen,
she´s picking at old knots.

She´s looking for something
beyond the easy warmth
of her childhood unraveling now
as a tangled, silvered thread
she can barely call her life.

Smoothing long strands,
lone and fragile images,
she feels for a sturdy yarn
to weave some rest and safety
from all this loss and moving on again.

She´s not looking for answers or
reasons or the home she never knew
but imagines a tapestry with all her tropic
and snowbelt hues, a seasoned palette
she can recognize.

She´s hopeful she can learn
some new craft at forty
and make a beauty wide enough
on the bare loom of her bones
to wrap four children and
a husband in.