I am knitting my way through lockdown.

Jumpers for grandchildren.

Three down, one to go.

I finger the wool like worry beads.

Everything has turned into

the terminology of wool.

It’s a one-ply world. 

Thin. 

Frail.

There is little pattern to the days.

We eat, we sleep, we make do.

Morning, afternoon, night merge seamlessly.

Ribbed by death reports.

Lives have been lost, carelessly, like dropped stitches,

many have dropped through the cracks,

of poverty, vulnerability, instability.

Instructions have been inaccurate.

Our threadbare world has unravelled.

If there’s an upside, might it be that we can darn a hole

in our now emission-free earth?

Compensate the tardiness, delusional exceptionalism.

The News is permeated by 

sharp clack of needle on needle, 

verse on verse, the rhythm of the rows.

Metal clicks like a clock. Time passes.

In the end, buttons will need threaded, anchored.