The Bronte Skirt, and: Crocheting the Shawl

The Bronte Skirt, and: Crocheting the Shawl

The Bronte Skirt

I found it pressed between the sweaters, outside
on the sale rack of the import store:
three tiers of sun-faded cloth
substantial as parlor drapery—
crushed velour and cotton
dressed with mauve ruffles and, here and there,
the embroidered emblems of a forgotten time
from those novels I devoured as a girl:
Little Women, Jane Eyre, a skirt I imagine
nineteenth-century women wore—the Bronte sisters
as they climbed the steep cobbles of Main Street,
returning from the stationer or the apothecary
with bundles in their arms for Papa and themselves,
as they traipsed across Haworth Moor,
the potent depth of peat under them,
curlews shrieking and swooping over their heads
and winds wrapping around them like shawls.
Their skirts swept freely over bracken and gorse,
skirts with a weight, a sureness of their own,
the presence of something more than myself
I long to wear.

Crocheting the Shawl

Because I don't know the finishing stitch
for this shawl, I end up at the chain bookstore
under florescent lights, ploughing through
Crocheter's Companion, Easy to Make Crochet.
What I want is my grandmother
sitting beside me on her Duncan Fyfe sofa.
I want her alive, calling me
Koukla, her needleworked pillows
nested on the cushions,
in air infused with the scents from the open doorway
of her kitchen—olive oil, cinnamon,
oregano, the promise
of abundance.
I need to see her hands once more, age-spotted
and nimble, the fluid motion of her fingers
as natural as singing
or breathing, her voice telling me
how I can
complete this piece without her.