*****
look at that little mat there — what did they used to call that (damask? brocade? that contrasting weave catching the light) back when the creation of such a complicated and beautiful pattern would have required all the accumulated skill (and a month or two of the lives of) the very finest of weavers?
a piece one foot by two, like this one, would have cost a small fortune — a fortune for which, perhaps, generations of family members had forsaken and subsumed every moral urging, every personal preference in love…
i got this placemat at the dollar store.
and then this carpet i am sitting on right now cross legged: why, until a generation or two ago none but the very priveledged could dream of possessing such a thing to block upward draughts and cushion their steps.
this one goes all the way from wall to wall!
i write.
i write without need to make ink, to gather feathers for my quills, to purchase or cozen such paper as may be accessed handmade, or to learn how to make it myself…
then mail it to thousands of readers without need of envelopes, reproduction costs, stamps, return postage, trips to the printer, post office, rejection slips…
approval, instead. heartfelt thanks from my awesome reader family. even, sometimes, a donation to lighten my load. the fulfillment of doing the work i was put here to do
seeing clearly (have two good eyes!)
speaking clearly (mind is intact!)
using one thumb (two good hands!)
on my little android (solar energy to power it!)
right over there is a library book — on the other side of the world, an inaccessible treasure. mine, along with a million others just like it, just for the asking!
drinking this cup of tea. they bring it, you know, from exotic lands where people spend half their lives bent double in knee-deep water to cultivate it — the women with their babies on their backs…
sweetened by the syrup of an agave plant, grown and brought here from a very different but equally exotic land…
even the toothed plastic spout of its bottle is a wonder. after all, someone had originally to conceive of this totally counterintuitive way to control drippage, patent it, pitch it, perhaps robbed of its just deserts by pressure from some major manufacturer, saw it go into production…
print on my wall. ordinary. “cheap.” how many colors, each one in its perfectly aligned layer in the days before digital art, printed separately, patiently, one atop the next?
this cushion… these slippers… this vibrantly beautiful flower…
*****
The poet/editor of this website is physically disabled, and lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level. Contributions may be made at:https://www.gofundme.com/are-you-a-patron-of-the-arts
