Two Seamstresses in the Workroom, by W.F. Lantry

Two Seamstresses in the Workroom, by Edouard Vuillard (France). 1893.

Two Seamstresses in the Workroom

"I wonder: are my limitations ours?
What can my hands produce which yours cannot?
These shears - a polished steel interface
between me and the cloth - could you not use
their intersecting contours to trace
the same patterns I find carefully wrought
in chalk along this silken organdy,

its plain weave balanced by complexity
of printed roses, petals, green-veined leaves
falling away along a future seam?"
She answered: "When all patterns interfuse
their borders into one, roses redeem
all our divisions, and the eye perceives
no separation, even when the stem

turns back upon itself beneath the hem,
our vision follows, crafting it complete.
And so my hands are yours, and yours are mine
and all these roses, ruby or chartreuse,
repeat what they conceal: curve or line,
the flowing border or the gathered pleat,
until blossoms, transformed, become earthstars.

W.F. Lantry

W.F. Lantry’s poetry collections are The Terraced Mountain (Little Red Tree 2015), The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree 2012), winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry, The Language of Birds (2011). He received his PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Honors include the National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, Patricia Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors' Prize, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), the Paris Lake Poetry Prize and Potomac Review Prize. His work appears widely online and in print. He currently works in Washington, DC. and is editor of Peacock Journal.