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| Overshot Coverlet - Detail |
Counting the Dust of Jacob
James Hart
Who can count the dust of Jacob
or number the fourth part ofIsrael
Numbers 23:10 (NIV)
We read the text of lost daughters
in the dim blood of unnumbered sons.
They sleep under thick grass coverlets
woven with threads of indigo and madder,
violets matted by our feet in May,
wild rose briars stitching them into time.
We dream of ancestors at their looms,
unaware we are the mordant in the dye
while little claws clutch at our shoes,
and something in our spirits implores
us to linger upon this sleeping earth
longer than it takes us to place our
tributary flowers below their names,
or note dates in paper’s embracing space,
a history beside an x or asterisk
tying forgotten bones to a single star,
raising from the dust of Jacob
our long losses under summer sky.
July 25, 2001
James Hart
Who can count the dust of Jacob
or number the fourth part of
Numbers 23:10 (NIV)
We read the text of lost daughters
in the dim blood of unnumbered sons.
They sleep under thick grass coverlets
woven with threads of indigo and madder,
violets matted by our feet in May,
wild rose briars stitching them into time.
We dream of ancestors at their looms,
unaware we are the mordant in the dye
while little claws clutch at our shoes,
and something in our spirits implores
us to linger upon this sleeping earth
longer than it takes us to place our
tributary flowers below their names,
or note dates in paper’s embracing space,
a history beside an x or asterisk
tying forgotten bones to a single star,
raising from the dust of Jacob
our long losses under summer sky.
July 25, 2001
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Note: Among the items of record in my great great great grandfather Nowel Alfred Hart's will and probate papers is an inventory listing his property, including supplies of indigo and madder, which are both used to make blue and red dyes. These colors you see regularly in antique red, white, and blue overshot coverlets.
When Nowel Hart died in Callaway County, MO, in 1837, indigo and madder were important enough staples of frontier life to be listed as property in his probate inventory.
For me, the syllables of the two words spoken together in this order, "indigo and madder," create a woven sound pleasing to the ear, and rich with colors of their own.
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