Weaver's Cottage: A Dream Poem

by Terri Windling

Portrait of a place.

Follow the drang, the cobbles,

the scent of apples and ash.

Crooked oak door. Time-scarred floor.

Shipyard timber blackened by age.

Granite carried from farmyard and moor and

piled by hands that four hundred years

have returned to Devon soil.

There are ghosts in the stone.

The past is rising damp as the mist

on Meldon Hill. Hearts beat

in the walls of cob; the past is

listening, hushed, still,

as fiddle and drum make music

to rise with the smoke

to the roof of straw.

Weave, he said.

Ribbons of color unfolded from my fingertips. Blue

when I filled a brush with paint, gold

when I opened a library book, earth brown

when I brewed my tea and carried it to the parlor. White

when I opened the morning mail. Ribbons of silver

covered my desk, words hammered out like jewelry

to lie upon the page. Forest green

and claret red as we lay abed in the moonless dark.

Weave, he said; that's why this is called

Weaver's Cottage, didn't you know?

This is your work. To weave it together.

To weave daily life into art.