The Loom

Vincent Hostak

November 17, 2021

In the Mission City, 

beneath a bridge at Camden Street 

bats before dusk make a close-knit coat.

Gauzy fiber, twisted lips on tiny heads

drape across the bridge’s belly

above a pulsing river.

The hour the first thread is pulled

the framework is abruptly lost

and fast unraveling strings

pull tiny tatters from the whole.

In chartless flight to north and south

inferring not a single path, but

breaking wide into the hunt, the dark.

As if they never knew each other,

decamping from familiar friends,

forgetful of the mouse-ear fur

that warmed them each

when all were clenched upon the beams.

Or, how they trembled here

even in sleep that Worst of Winters.

That Worst of Winters: cousins froze,

shapes fell like sumac fronds

to join the river or veil the walks.

But all of that was spells ago.

Spring’s thaw bent to Summer’s lure,

“one trance traded for another

is how we tell our histories here,”

as each is drawn to the loom again

charmed by chattering and heartbeat chants.

Vincent Hostak is a poet, essayist, and advocate. Long a resident of Texas, he resides in the intersection of city and wilderness near Denver. His poetry is published in Sonder Midwest (#5), Tejascovido.com, the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Wild, Abandoned (the blog). His podcast on refugee resettlement & culture: https://anchor.fm/crossingsrefugees.