For Hazel … on the occasion of her first public performance… The Twelfth of November, Two Thousand Four A.D.

First there was Eve, weaving her leaves…then the daughters of Eve covering their bodies with animal skins…. admiring each others’ efforts to make each garment more beautiful…. learning to spin hair and wool and plants into fibers…learning to weave plastic into clothing…. wearing silk and cotton and linen and nylon and spandex. Teaching their daughters and granddaughters. Hazel, you are the future. When you are my age, you may be clothing your body in woven colored lights and perfumed gasses…you may be wearing clothing that’s alive and lives on your body in symbiotic harmony….pet tee shirts who eat dead skin. The world you will live in is unknown to us today but for sure, women will be weaving the way they always have…weaving materials into clothing and weaving words into rhymes and weaving the world together, working to weave “Peace On Earth”…. the way they always have. Here is a nursery rhyme for you that was given to me by my grandmother. You may pass it on.
“There was an old woman
tossed up in a basket…
Nineteen times as high as the moon.
And where she was going
I could not but ask it.
For in her hand she carried a broom.
“Old woman. Old woman. Old woman,” said I.
“Oh, whither, Oh, wither, Oh, whither so high?”
“To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.”
“May I go with you?”
“Aye…. bye and bye.”