Knitting

Two needles with stitches of heather and gorse and clouds

A child's hat.

Not yet born, but in transit.

The mother fled from Syria to England to Turkey

England is the colour of heather and gorse and clouds.

Yet it splits the family.

I knit on.

Remembering my own family arriving dirty, dishevelled, stinking of long journeys and fish.

Heavy fur hats preserving the dignity of the past into the ridicule of the present.

My great grandmother's hands blistered as she delivered coal by wheelbarrow from house to house

Her daughter's hands blistered on the sewing kit she gained at school - not the reward for intelligence that would have set her free, but the necklace of iron keeping her poor and enslaved.

My father's soul blistered, from the chants of other children

Hating his otherness, his difference, his Yiddishkeit.

His soul blistered from rescuing his father from the pub

Where he drank to hide his otherness, his difference, his Yiddishkeit

Lest his soul blister and burst open.

A butcher needs hands that are unblistered and firm.
To prepare meat and to serve.

My soul is blistered and burst with hatred and fear.
It boils in the shtetl and burst the bridges in the ghettos

In the camp it drowns us.

I knit - heather and gorse and cloud

I pray for the next generation

I pray for peace - in heather and gorse and cloud.