The Many Ways the Light Gets In

It was easy to judge those Jane Austen ladies
languishing all afternoon over embroidery
pulling thread in and out of hooped linen
as the world spun round without them.

The bone stays in the starched bodice of their dresses
forced an upright position,
the way nuns in a cloister sit
all spine and neck erect
to better access the “no thought”
they need to taste
the honey of meditation

centering their minds
to a pinpoint
of light

I’ve envied the discipline of those mystics
tossing off thought like an extra blanket
but not so much the ladies
sealed in their parlors

then today
I found myself
deep in silence
pulling a rainbow of silken threads
through a hooped grid
the rhythmic in and out
of the steel needle flashing its tail of color
dissolving all thoughts in whorls of amber
sapphire, magenta—
falling upward
each stitch an entrance.