Poems of age
Mist over the pond:
What has become
of last night’s moon?
The old pond:
Tangled grasses at the shore
But at the center, ripples
Still hold the winter moonlight
Practice
Who?
Clue:
MU!
Stitching

For the Solstice
In and out
The bright needle goes
Into the fabric
Through
And to the other side,
Moving invisibly
On the far side,
Hidden
Like the vanished sun
In its dark passage
Across another world
A world dark to us
Because unseen.
Yet we are the ones in the dark;
They—those on the other side—
Are bathed in light.
The Egyptians thought of the Sun
as descending
into the world of death
where Osiris lay,
and animating the dead world with its rays,
stitching the dismembered god
With lines of light.
As we stitch our lives,
The visible and the invisible
Are linked together.
The moving needle threads our actions
Into a familiar tapestry
Clear and measured in the light of day.
On the other side, unseen,
The results of our actions
Weave a pattern of their own
Unknowable
Till time turns
And the fabric unfolds.
Nina Shuka Klippel began writing poetry in the second half of her life, round about the time she switched careers from public relations to art therapy. She has been a student at the Village Zendo since 2004.