V.A. Bettencourt
Shadow Knitting
She works in shadows cast by an ancient tree
whose rogue roots girdle half its branches and
guide others to sprout strangling shoots.
She knits moths that morph in wind
with the same artistry used by women
who watched trains from windowsills
to transpose timetables into cyphers
they encoded in scarves
scanned by soldiers to win wars.
She purls stitches created by foremothers who
designed sinuous garments in backrooms
centuries before calculus described their curves,
& coded algorithms in fiber
long before Ada Lovelace programmed them
on the first computer
seen as Charles Babbage’s brainchild.
She tailors schemas developed by women who
dodged guilds that blocked petticoats,
patched socks to secure footing
on uneven fields,
bent wooden orders that barred them
& cast off girdles with craft
so she can weave new patterns
to warp the geometry
of stunted structures
bound
by
unraveling
seams.
