Calling

I heard the shuttle’s run and then
The heddles rattling as the harness fell,
And on her warp the sun’s unspent
Irrevocable light picked out
The leaf-shape of our shadows, caught
By the weft’s closure. While she worked
I’d been reciting a litany of names
For our unborn first child, plying
Syllable and breath, as if that fiber
Looped through the mesh of consonance and timbre
Might lead me, like a lifeline traced
To some unfrayed purpose, or the last-
Drawn thread, cut and tied, the pattern cinched,
To certainty.
    From the overgrown orchard
Behind the house, came a rustling, a mingling,
The sharp scent of ripening I followed in mind
Past stirrings in the hedgerow vines
And among the streamside willows
To the split twin trunk of an apple tree,
Fallen, but still somehow in leaf
And bearing.
    I knew then what I sought to name:
Twined strand of our unraveling.