Knitting

(Inspired by Sarah Filmer’s exhibition, Knitting the Walls, at God’s House Tower, Southampton 2022)
The boys protest about the latest project at school.
‘Boys don’t knit. Our mothers do. Our grandmothers do.’
The teacher bangs the duster on the desk and tells the
‘Shut up! The whole class will have to knit a scarf for your SUPW.’
‘Some Useful Periods Wasted,’ shouts a boy and
promptly receives a piece of chalk
bulls eye on his forehead.

Teach me how to knit, I ask Aaji. She sits me down with
her needles and baby blue wool. But her arthritic fingers
give up on her. She watches the cricket match instead.

Teach me to knit, I ask my Ma. But she is stirring the chicken curry
with one hand and reading Shakespeare with the other.
I’m sorry,’ she says, I have to plan this lesson for tomorrow.

I will teach you how to knit, says my father. He’s found me sitting
on the doorstep, looking like the world has given up on me.
But how can you? You’re a boy – and Boys Don’t Knit.

He smiles and sets to work. Knit and purl.
Knit and purl. The needles clack as he speeds up his act.
I stare at him, dumbfounded.

Should I be proud of him? A man who can knit?

I didn’t understand it then, but now
sitting in a room with knitted walls, surrounded by yarns
of wool and words, of history and emotions
Three ducks in knitted vests flying into a woolly sunset.
Poets sitting together sharing our stories,
and me
telling a story of how my father taught me how to knit.

And by doing that, he taught me so much more.