Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Ikat



Today’s word: “ikat”(ee-kaht) Tie-dyeing yarn before weaving. Here’s an amazing time-lapse video on youtube. 

Weave
We’re knitted in our mother’s womb it’s said …
            woven like ikat, in complexity.
What does it take to make a human self
            with everything in place, just so?

Imagine for a moment that you’re the one
            tasked with this challenge most formidable.
Where would you start to piece together
            muscle, sinew, bone or brain?

What would your pattern be … what loom …
            what materials for living flesh and breath?
Would you start at the bottom or the top …
            inside out or outside in? What scaffold would suffice?

Perhaps the mechanics would come easily,
            adding this bone to that … but then we know
What works. What if you’d never before seen
            this creature and had to start from scratch?

And once the pieces were all together matched,
            what would cause it first to move?
Or keep it moving on its daily pilgrimage?
            Or cause it in the end to die?

Maybe motion would be the easier part.
            If consciousness was required, what would be its source?
And then, would the creature understand the nature of its life?
            Would it question you as maker?

Would it call to you for help or understanding?
            Would it pray for guidance or scream at you in pain?
Would it dance in joy at its perfection
            or in thankfulness for what little it could comprehend?

Would you answer? Softly or with thunder?
            Would you feel responsible? Or turn your back
On this dependent questioning thing?
            What if you fell in love with your creation?

What if you decided that this being
            should have a soul and look a lot like you?
Would you evoke this extra bit of eternality
            from chemicals inert or bits of stone?

Or would you place a bit of self, your own,
            into this troubled creature and his world,
Knowing that if he searched persistently
            he would find you there.

Anne Selleck
Copyright 2013

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