16 fibres torn from a dress
worn by grandma, now part of her quilt,
lays on the floor,
next to the door,
by the nightstand where a wild rose rests.
16 fibres wrapped round a dazzled bloom,
caught the eye of a toddler with chestnut hair
who called out “Nana,” with a cheeky stare,
when she ran through mist-brushed meadows.
16 silk fibres gild an elegant neck
tied in a knot on a windswept deck
Where an irate woman
wears a gray fedora that shouts, “Dare me!”
16 fibres woven once tight,
unravel now shapeless in the middle of the night,
Where dreams tax a heart with peace gone missing.
16 fibres in a cold blue dawn,
filaments coiled in twisted clouds drawn,
Where yesterday’s prayers fail.
16 fibres left in a book,
tie childhood to wrinkles when friends no longer look.
Departed and frayed with time stretched thin.
16 fibres in Paul’s dusty cloak,
worn in Damascus, a sacred yoke.
His message comes in a brimstone storm, sulfur the companion.
16 fibres this horseman carried,
speaks no resentment with bitter words parried.
Patience, everyman’s grace, grants no time to turbulent fate.
The Englishmen, in the learned Sonnet,
strokes 16 fibres across a sallow face,
and pushes hard in a losing race,
making war with time,
line after line
rushing verse to vellum for life’s repair.