My Secret Flag by Rachel Loden

What a giant I must seem to them, an exhausted giant who dozes about her sewing.

Asleep in mid-stitch, sorting the day’s haul of cinders, rubies, griefs—

They were laughing and carrying on, their tiny silver needles flying in and out, tiny silver thimbles on their fingers.

It’s no use of course, keeping secrets from them, when chattering is almost their religion.

Some held corners of the flag like an enormous quilt, and some danced on little shelves above the workshop.

They were so merrie they fell asleep again.

In the morning my beautiful flag was finished, every stitch in place and every seam.

So now I raise it—slowly, underneath a secret sky.

Near the door to the half-daft and the cradle of kleptocracy.

Where it rips and shivers, rips and shivers once more

and makes me furiously glad, and fills me up with secret pleasure.

1 Comment on “Featured Poem: My Secret Flag

  1. I love this line. “So now I raise it—slowly, underneath a secret sky.” It give the suggestion that although the flag is ready, we can’t just fly it as yet. What a deep thought!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: