She was born to cloth,
and the finger spinning wool, occupied her day until dusk,
the needle and the loom, and the moon,
this was her industry, she laboured her fingers to the bone,
in Kerry her fingers, her craft, earned her living,
the cool light of indifference coloured by belief,
that to work the linen you found wealth,
her wealth did not materialize in the material, but in her creativity,
in her finger nimble attitude lay gratitude,
the knowing that her art sustained and spanned all known hungers,
yeas, pastimes, and generations,
payments of existence, no pay for a thousand hours worked,
she wished the lace and cotton would simply die away,
and late at night she would kneel praying by candlelight,
bitterness eating into her blood red fingers, the weavers made their wares,
the work saddled those who grew heavy on perspiration, desperation, and depression,
the old girls laughed as they spun their homemade baskets of threads,
the young girls smoked and dreamed of tapestry's, the shuttle whizzed back and forth,
as unrelenting as clockwork, the trapped finger remained unyoked,
and the big Irish woman in the Grey flannel trousers, burst her lungs at mealtimes,
some of the tumbled down old folk said she used to wash her arse in the Liffy,
and the weavers foreman washed his teeth in whiskey and acid,
one March morning when Kerry looked like Damson with oil on it,
she walked the country road to town,
her muffler pressed close to her ears, and melancholy gin on her breath,
the last nights rain lay cold and shining on the old cobblestones,
later in the cut leaf morning, she walked back home with her nothingness,
where her children lay wrapped up in old limerick shawls of twine,
looked after by a father who spat out of the side of his nose,
the girls who did the night shift on leaving would shout out,and curse their mothers who sent them here,
her hair tousled greasy, unkempt as a starlings nest,
she would walk home in the night jar spent morning,
with her head for wages, her inner eye bending the light to suit her hurt,
she dived into her bed, full of vocations, full of tremble, flayed with misery,
full of tired aggression, she just lay there and willed sleep to come,
and she willed it faster than light, and as soon as sleep took her in its somnolent stride,
she dreamed of a night where no tears came, where love in disguise looked in the window of thoughts,
her mind ran wreak less though feeling, imagined herself with a man, who for all grace was not a weaver,
she dreamed of a mackerel sky, where the sweetness of air never ended,
she despised the loom, and all the people that worked them, she had worked her face to the bone,
she pulled the stars down from the sky, in her dreaming state, picked the wool from her eyes,
and for a few weaver free hours, walked in some other world.
