March 31, 2020

Is That Too Much to Ask?

I don't feel up to this. I don't feel up
to the task of piecing words together
like quilt squares. I don't have the right
education, training, and experience –
or at least not enough of any of them.

I don't know enough to do the stitching
properly, or how to attach the backing.
What is backing anyway?  And then
there's batting. I guess that goes in the
middle. It's enough to drive me batty.

But it sure doesn't seem like enough.
Enough. The very word reeks of Middle
English – and I know very little of Middle
English, or the Old High German before
that. So does reeks for that matter.

Reeks reeks of Middle English. Onions
come to mind, and garlic hung from
low beams in a cramped and smoky
cottage, where the pungent odors
penetrate the fibers of a woolen shawl.

The shawl covers the shoulders of a woman
who knows things: when to plant the garlic
and where to find the wild onions, how to
tend the sheep and how to spin their wool
into a shawl, for warmth in Middle Winter.

Is she batty too? How did she learn
what she knows? Did her mother teach
her? Her aunts? The village witch?
It's almost certain she did not learn it
from a book, not in Middle English.

I want to know what she knows. 
I want to know what she knows, and
I want to know words and books and
how to piece them together with the
batting and backing and everything.