Local Lines

How To Cast Off

I poised the needles to do the final thing you can do for a shawl (before the fringe) and forgot, forgot how to cast off.

My hands blanked out how to do it and I have done it a hundred hundred times. I got a fright.

I walked around the house for a bit but it didn't come back. I sat. Learning how not to know something.

I still knew what a selvedge looks like. And I still knew wool. I put two and two together.

And worked it out. Yes, it was late. I was tired. But casting off had slipped away from me.

- Jennifer Compton

Jennifer Compton lives at Carrum but has been a regular reader at Woodend and Castlemaine events. Her book, the moment, taken was published by Recent Work Press in Canberra in 2021.

Local Lines features poetry by locals about local and any other matters. Please submit poems to Bill Wootton at cottlesbreedge@gmail.com