Sewing the Labyrinth

She will sit

and she will stitch.

 

Penelope sewed for love; those unnamed girls — sister

of swans, spinner of straw to gold — sewed for their lives.

Sold into tangles made by mothers, the endless edge

of the coin between women. If girls have keys for fingers

 

then locks cannot hold them. Now Ariadne has her thread,

golden as porridge, and she too must sew. For love, for life,

to be another man's wife, she forces fistfuls of gold

into keyholes. The desertion of man makes a hero, but

 

mothers must build their homes from birth-red dirt and branches

sap-bled. A thousand pomegranate seeds will make a fireplace.

A bull made of gowns, a beast stitched from slippers: this is the task

that will make a woman a myth.

 

Now she will sit

and she will stitch

because that is what girls must do.