We labor with language, our pointed wits
flashing like sewing needles in a sweatshop.
But it’s no sweat. We like it. It keeps us
keen and intensely busy. Of course, it’s
not the cloth—which fits or doesn’t, lasts
or frays, flows out in patterns already dated
or slavishly in fashion—no, not the cloth,
but the cadence. A cadence that rocks us
around the clock like waves slapping a hull:
the tide we think in time with, though we know
its isn’t the measure of truths being woven,
but the unraveling palaver of our hearts.