I love old rugs.
Rugs with animals, flowers, and small people.
Prayer rugs and large entrance rugs.
Rugs with dragons and monkeys.
Tiger-rugs.
Yes, especially tiger-rugs.
One day I will buy a house
and fill it with old rugs.
I'll put rugs everywhere on the floors.
And on the walls too.
And, perhaps, even on the ceiling.
I will lie down on a rug and listen.
The silence of a room covered in rugs is very different
from the silence of a room with naked floors.
I will listen to the rugged silence for such a long time
that I too become part of it.
I will shrink and disappear into the rug,
becoming one of its tiny people.
I will jump from rug to rug,
meeting its wondrous animals,
befriending a dragon,
fighting with a tiger.
One day, one of the flowers in the rug
will swallow me whole,
and something would change in the silence,
it would gain an extra stitch.
(The silence, not the rug.)
A wondrous poem of the imagination, silence, isolation, and surprises. A poem with witty plays on words. A poem that is both light and heavy, that unfolds like lines of music. Where will it take us? My favorite line: "Rugs with animals, flowers,
and small people." I adore those small people in their rugged kingdom! I'd like to go there, too.
Posted by: Emily Fragos | December 25, 2020 at 05:48 PM
I don't know which I like better: the poem or the visual. I keep returning to both.
The poem is so tender and comforting, but the visual speaks to my love of the terrain.
Posted by: Grace Cavalieri | December 26, 2020 at 08:57 AM
am loving all the whimsy in this poem: '..even on the ceiling" and 'becoming one of its tiny people' and 'befriending a dragon' I think reading this to a child would be wondrous!
Posted by: joanna c. mgdal | December 27, 2020 at 02:42 PM