When I was small I was a living loom
Tilting my hands like a cat's cradle
While grandmother wound the wool
Into a widening ball
Tom Thumbs in the garden
Rioted over the path
A rumba of sunny flounces
Wetting my tiny ankles
Peony roses eased their velvet waistbands
Cracks of shadows, like pleats between their petals
Then there was the enigma of the shells
Devoid of occupants, as if the horned snails
Had glided into the air and disappeared
So many mysteries of loom, of shadow, of shell
Finding my thread in the greater pattern
A Shirley Temple girl in somebody else's frock
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem