Needlework: Ripping

Ripping, snipping,
Slashing, gnashing
Scissors,

Where the hours left light trail,
Where a needle etched a tale,
Catching in its driven thread
A little something of the sun
Like an adventitous shred
Of gold, in duller weaves misspun;
Something of the swallow-wings
That cut the sky in singing rings,
And something of the intimacy
Of trees whose boughs beckoned my eyes,
The things I had not time to see
Out of the day's unsprung surprise;

(And something . . . something more
An incommunicable lore
Which left a trace along these seams
Elusive as the flare
Of a new moon's gleams
Dying on a templed stair. . . .)

Rip and snip,
Slash and gash,
Scissors,

Until your fatal way is run,
And every crying stitch undone;
Until your fine, cold teeth have snipped,
Slashed and gashed, clipped and ripped
Up and down my seams of day. . . .
The teeth of time have just that way.