Tags
Cleveland poet, grief, loss, philosophical poetry, poem, poetry, tapestry, threads
I’m hanging onto a thread
How strong and thick remains unknown
I don’t know if
Anyone at all
Is hanging onto the other side
Or if
Like stars
Whose light reaches us millennia after the star has died
If the thread is merely being held
By a phantom
Because I haven’t found out yet
That it’s not being held onto
I used to believe
We were tapestries
Woven together by these threads
These occurrences, people, events, places, things,
That make up who we are
That make up the tapestry of who we’ve become
I used to believe it was part of the design
Part of the purpose
Each carefully created woven thread strung together
Some hidden meaning behind it all
Some outcome, circumstance that we were supposed to learn
… Used to believe
It still is, they still are
Important
But I wonder if
The meaning assigned in my youth
Was a little hasty or misunderstood
Maybe I focused on the wrong threads at the wrong times
Distracted by their particular opulence – their shimmer, sparkle
Maybe I wanted to be more than who I was
And the only way to enhance my own tapestry
Was to grasp at these threads and weave them in
Now
Those threads are few and far between
I don’t seek them out
Nor do I create them
Once
I was an expert loom weaver, once
I enjoyed sitting at the spindle
Spinning those threads
Now… I just wait and see what happens
So you
My special thread
Left over from the days of yore – you
I find myself clinging to
Extra tightly
Preserving with a little more care
Even though I don’t know
If any meaning is still there, attached to the other side
I hope
And maybe that’s what gives you a little extra shimmer, sparkle, opulence
after all this time
it is the hope
That indeed
You are still hanging on as well
Even if it’s just by a thread.
Sincerely, Lori 