Sewing Clothes, for La by Catherine Zickgraf

Sewing Clothes, for La

—Self-discipline at her art makes her powerful. 

She traces her arms into the fabric of sunrise.

            She cuts out the golden cloth of morning. 

She unstrings silver linings from clouds 

            to thread her dress together.  

She wraps her hair in the azure sky

            and studies the world through her chestnut eyes.

She sews while she ponders all that is she—

            her fabric, it flows like poetry.

Her very daydreams create the life she knows.

She is wind through waves of trees,

            the wavering flame in the sheer shadows,

            and the swaying of the velvet sea.

Notice how God clothes the birds in their feathers

            and dresses the lilies of the field.

As the first to create the beauty in things,

            God Himself is beautiful.

It was His idea to fashion the horizon, 

            the liquid colors of the morning sky.

And He sketched the layers of moving blue silk, 

            the oceans sparkling through His eyes. 

She asks, is it wrong to stare in the mirror?

            —because what I see, it pleases me.

And her mother says:

            babydoll, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. 

            I, too, love to look at you.

            For the Creator of colors, of patterns, of life,

            God Himself, loves beauty too.

Two lifetimes ago, Catherine performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Victorian Violet Press, and The Grief Diaries. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press.

Watch and read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com