The Gifts
Sandi Leibowitz
For Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman
The sisters parted
once the gifts were given.
No need now to thread their lives
through a single needle;
each had her own path to stitch.
The younger one loved spring best
so her work spilled grape hyacinths
into the winter meadows,
made blue waves swim
onto the white cloth of frozen rivers.
From her needle bloomed larkspur,
columbine and the tendrils of sweet pea
curled like napping mouselings.
She embroidered rainfall,
never harsh and pelting but
silver droplets,
and beaded moonstone dew
onto the morning grass.
The elder preferred the forest
by night.
She stitched moss
out of shadow-threads
and gifted golden eyes
to the hunting owls.
Her needle pricked new stars
in the fabric of the sky
to light the trails of wolves.
Will-o-the-wisps and witches
blessed her for her subtle shadings,
pewters and slates
silvering the sables.
She threaded fox-bark and bat-cry
to make hammocks
for the lunar moths,
embroidered dreams
for the elms and oaks,
who sighed in their sleeping,
rustling leaves in canine frenzy
as they leaped and loped
free of their roots.
The sisters never met again,
but the elder smiled to find
crocuses shining like a ring of lamps
around her midnight thicket,
the younger rejoiced at the canopies
of Spanish moss sewn amongst
her plum blossoms.
