Ghost Blanket

You gave me a friendship blanket:
it is beautiful.
You didn't spin the wool yourself
or steep it in earth dyes
which you had crushed with a stone
to blood red, nut brown.
You didn't make a loom from branches
weighted down with pebbles.
Dew didn't seep into it;
it wasn't rinsed in a stream
and laid out in the sun to dry.
It doesn't smell of you and isn't pungent
with the smoke from your fires.
You didn't think of me,
dream dreams of me, as you wove it
your fingers chapped and numb.
Your ancestors didn't blow through it
as it hung, misting their breath into yours.
The pattern doesn't reveal
anything about your people;
there are no stories pricked in with the stitches
no clues to hunting grounds or homes.
You gave me a friendship blanket
in the airport departure hall

and you turned into a bird.

© Jacqueline Mézec

(This poem came second in the 2006 Jersey Arts Trust Channel Islands Writers' Competition and was published in the competition anthology and also in All Over The Place - writers inc. Writers-of-the-Year Winners Anthology 2006)

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