Tuesday evening, July 14th, 2020

A few months ago I cane across a book of poetry written by Jane Kenyon.

Her name was new to me, as was her poetry, but the few poems that were available to me interested and touched me, and I sent away for her Collected Poems.  I have been enjoying them immensely ever since, and was sorry to read that she had died in 1995.

I had marked Page 248 with a little slip of paper, to remind myself to go back and read her poem "Not Here", because it reminded me of a little calamity I had experienced, (and  I will tell you about after you have read Jane's account of her experience)......

"Searching for pillowcases trimmed

with lace that my mother-in-law

once made, I open the chest of drawers

upstairs to find tthat mice

have chewed the blue and white linen

dishtowels to make their nest,

and bedded themselves among embroidered dresser scarves

and fingertip towels.

Tufts of fibers, dropping like black

caraway seeds,and the stains of birth

and afterbirth give off the strong

unforgettable attar of mouse

that permeates the old farmhouse

on humid summer days.

A couple of hickory nuts

roll around as I lift out

the linens, while a hail of black

sunflower shells

falls on the pillow cases,

yellow with age, but intact.

I'll bleach them and hang them in the sun

to dry.  There's almost no one left

who knows how to crochet lace.

The bright-eyed squatters are not here.

They've scuttled out to the fields

for summer, as they scuttled in

for winter, along the wall from chair

to skirted chair,  making themselves

flast and scarce while the cat

dozed with her paws in the air,

and we read the mail

or evening papers, unaware"

Well, my calamity happened in the dead of night, but it was while Callie was still with us, probably deep in sleep on the couch.

I had been busy weaving, as usual, and had made a scarf that I was especially delighted with,,,  Along our hallway my oldest son put a railing at elbow level, to discourage falling, but I found that it was just the thing to hang folded scarves and tea towels and other weavings, straight off the loom.

This is where I had put the scarf in question, so I could admire it!

Here is a picture of the fringe that hung on each end!!

Some time during the night a little mouse (or a little rat) came along and chewed each fringe from one end of the scarf - right  to the hemstitching on the end!!

So now the scarf sits in my Hope Chest (although I don't have hopes that it will grow a new fringe) -

and some day soon I will snip off the fringe from the other end, and hem both ends neatly.

So there is my tale of woe which is quite as soul searing as the damage done to Jane Kenyon's mother-in-law's lace edged pillow case.