Strange Zen

Bolts of cloth,
one stacked on the other:
art
without meaning to be,
a picture of peace,
a memory of grandmothers’ feather beds.

You stand,
less looking
than soaking in the strange zen,
their aura, something
perhaps
only you can feel,

and only in this moment.

About this poem

I can’t sew a lick. But I’ve always loved going into fabric stores and seeing the patterns and colors. A poor man’s museum perhaps.

It began when my mother used to take me to Joanne’s Fabrics as a small boy, and it continues to this day. I have a friend, Maria Wulf, who is a fabric artist and when I get to visit her studio I can stand and look at the piles of cloth for what probably seems, to outsiders, a bit too long of a time. This particular stack of cloth was at the Shaker Villiage in Stockbridge, Mass.

Tom