Penelope Doing and Undone

Faith or fantasy, this tapestry? Every day I weave it.
Remembered passion is red. He’ll come back,
he’ll come back, the clack of the loom. Sometimes
my fingertips crack and bleed
as I weave yellow, sorrow, hopeful blue.

At night, it all comes undone. I feel his hand
on the small of my back and sighing, turn to find him.
The stranger takes me to his mouth,
pulling me by my hair. Deeply
asleep, I cannot escape the cries scraping

from him, from me. When it is finished, he pulls away
and I am betrayed by my own undoing.
I’m waiting for him to come back from the war.
I know the war ended years ago. But does it end?
Some men just disappear, even after they come back.

A woman I know is waiting, too,
weaving her own thing. Her man’s been locked up
longer than she can remember,
when she can remember,
but she’s got the children to do for.

Some people call me virtuous and others say I’m crazy.
Yellow turns into a bird, the sky is bold.
Persimmon houses appear everywhere
and the rivers are red. What if I didn’t wait, what if
he returns from whatever he has done, whatever

he has become, and finds the empty loom?
Sometimes I want to set this on fire, go home.
But I am wed to beauty, to the colors
of life under my hand. I must wait,
and weaving, create this world.

Deborah Tobola
Copyright © 2003

Deborah Tobola has published poems in dozens of print and on-line literary journals and anthologies. Her poem "Hummingbird In Underworld" was named one of five winners of Kalliope's 2002 Sue Saniel Eklind Poetry Contest, and her chapbook Breaking the Plate won honorable mention in the Concrete Wolf 2002 Chapbook Contest. Her work has been nominated for two Puschcart Prizes and has won awards from the Academy of American Poets. She runs the arts program in a California prison, where she also teaches creative writing classes.