A Lily poem

My first born daughter is working on her poetry portfolio today and we've been emailing about a poem. She said I could share it with you here.

The Art of Simple Life

July Fourth I come home
to a light brown linen tent, set
into the backyard, with heavy
sides that sway only a little in the wind.
The tent hugs a big barn loom, five by five
by six feet, built a hundred years ago, rebuilt
a hundred times by my mother;
in Connecticut and Vermont

and Virginia. Often she spins the thread
for the warp, the big wheel in our house
facing west towards the blue
mountains where I was born. I eat cold boiled potatoes

sliced in half, with salt and pepper, and drink a tall dark
Swiss beer. Nothing big happens. There is enough time. Moving
from upstairs to down the air pushes weightless layers of my
skirt to my elbows, suspending my heels mid-air in the moment.

This is such a welcome addition to my day. I was driving in to work this morning and thinking about Grace. I feel like I've been looking for more grace in my life, and this morning the phrase "Give us grace for today, feed the famished affections" popped up in my mind and I savored the feeling of famished affections. Grace. And here comes our Lily, with a poem that speaks of grace.

The photie is of my Fiber Pavilion, which Peter & I set up on the 4th of July this summer so I could weave on one of my big ol' looms. The warp was a wool blanket woven in the old style, half width to be seamed up the center. This warp has a pattern of 7 blue stripes that run up the sides of the blanket. The design comes from the time of box beds in Scotland, where the weaver did not trouble with pattern except where it would show, hanging out the side of the box bed.

Miss R still has my camera, but I promise a photo of the finished blanket soon.