By SARA LONDON
Stitch in Time
is tired of saving Nine,
weary of forever
stepping up, peachy, alert
and prissy, the reliable fixer,
patcher, elbow-
thigh-, knee-, ass-
rescuer, savior swift
with dowdy dexterity,
steely purpose and
doubling pep.
Oh so tired
of Time—the whispering
vast, the winds’ splitting
infinities, the centuries’
eruptions, feasts
of error and woe. Stitch
is dying for a tacit
measure, a whole sabbatical
seamless and teeming
with sleep. Let them
do the binding—the straggling,
shaggy Nine—let the hinder
guard make their sluggish
way forward, heel-draggers,
bumblers who can beat
no one and can’t even walk
the chalk, make them
tack a while in Samaritan
syntax, tending, nursing,
salvaging—so that Stitch
may dream the slip, love
the long drool in some
unplowed pasture, lick
the loitering of blessed
raggedy-assed lastness and
thrumming disaster. She’s
earned it, she’s spent her
spool, this cursed solver,
long-eyed and fibrous—
let her loose from this
curious contract;
the whip, it’s beastly,
—it’s time.
Sara London is the author of The Tyranny of Milk. She has taught at Mt. Holyoke, Smith, and Amherst College.
