HANDICRAFTS

                  When I was just a boy, I used to weave
                  Potholders out of stretchy colored strings
                  Hooked on a metal frame to which they’d cleave
                  While my mind idly thought of other things.
                  What strikes me now, as I compose this verse
                  Of measured lines stretched out across the page,
                  Is what I’d done back then was to rehearse
                  How to make patterns in a kind of cage
                  As I do now, but in a verbal way
                 To fabricate a woven artifact
                 By doing work that seems like play,
                 Yet with a joy that mere potholders lacked.
                      Weaving pentameters across the page
                      Now takes that craft to an exalted stage.

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