The house hides in the back of the garden.
No voice comes from it.
The village has moved to the fields.
Dishes are quiet, not a cork is popping;
it is the hot hour.
The sun beats the flagstones to distortion
and they surrender their inscrutable density,
rising in hieroglyphic waves.

Nothing is awake to excite the barking of chained dogs
lying in the dust behind the barn.
Nothing to entice the prostrated hens from out
of the shade and into the farmyard.
The curtains drawn, shutters closed,
nothing indicates whether the house is lived in,
except the suspicion of a shape sitting dark inside
at the threshold of light.

Look closer. It's a woman. She embroiders.
On the table next to her a vase holds one white lily.
She stirs the shade of the house into Summer's
immensity like a frail vessel on a troubled ocean,
sewing truth with little stitches, big stitches.
She embroiders, this expert stitcher of life,
weaving complicated filigrees
into the daily routine,
linking each thing to the next.

Safe inside her lover swims
in the sleep of oblivion.
She says nothing, insists on being quiet
about a thing that is only revealed
when man's hustle and bustle is appeased.
He is the loud mouth--
the story teller, the noise.
He has the bright feathers,
but she is the vessel
on which he can explore the big water,
the bridge allowing him to cross safely
to the other side and come back.
A stitch at a time, she secures their union
to each other and to the earth.

Sitting in a house at the edge of light
a woman embroiders.
She has no use for idle gossip,
political games, boastful displays.
Her house hides in the back of the garden,
no sound comes from it.
It has only known solitude or intimacy.

This house is ours when you are ready.

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