In Through The Bunny-Hole

While my father sewed my mother did the knitting.
"Every Aran pattern has its own story to tell," she told me.
And so ...this poem...first published in the Cork Literary Review 1V
The title came from that knitting rhyme she taught me when I was a child, and some of you out there will remember it.

In through the bunny-hole
Round the big tree
Out through the bunny-hole
And off goes she.

In Through the Bunny- hole

My mother never taught me how to KB.

 I can slip knitways and knit two together

even through back of loop.

I can pick up and knit and turn and purl and turn and slip

and pass slip stitch over.

Enough to make bobble and cable.

Enough to make story.

They say that every Aran pattern tells its own tale.

I see us sitting, generations of women,

clicking fluently with our fingers

of where we’ve been and where we are going

while our tongues trip over new syllables.

My mother never taught me how to KB.

She never needed to speak of village clearance

or emigration

or a woman in white foreboding ill

or a thrush heralding good fortune…

But what if I do?

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