Drowning in Linen

Civilization’s woven

From textiles, always has been.

Before civilization,

Before the earliest towns

Or henge monuments, before,

Perhaps, the first cave artists,

Someone wove grasses in plaits.

Beginning with a basket

Good for carrying some kit,

You could say the shroud began

Penelope can’t finish,

No one can. Last night, you woke

Tangled in off-brand cotton,

With a phrase you’d been dreaming

Still threading around your head,

Drowning in linen, drowning,

And down the road you could hear

The interwoven voices

Of someone’s television,

Someone’s truck’s talk radio.

Still groggy, you imagined

Them as devious cocoons

Needing their worms to make them,

Worms in them, worms they eat then.