"The twisted thread is stronger than the wind-swept fleece."

The Great Hunger' by Patrick Kavanagh What used to be taught were many arts.

How to measure a cut from a pound of butter and never need a scales.

How to balance a blackberry tart with sweet blacks and unripe reds.

How a tear in the pastry crust would allow the juice to rise and scorch.

How to crop the lid and crimp its edge.

How to scald a pan, take the cold out of milk for a litter. How to kill a fly to feed a limp-winged bat;

how to do it when you know they still die. How to salve nettle burns using sap from a young stem. How to pluck a tick from between a terrier's toes.

How to care, never betray it in words.

What to do with fruits too acerbic to eat: damsons, elderberries, crabs.

How to drizzle hot syrup on a cold plate; how to wait, watch the drops congeal, pour a liquid, set it firm and jellied.

How gooseberries that stew to a mealy green can be simmered to a lucid red preserve.

How to strip a bough of all its berries.

How to tell what's wrong with a clock by listening to its whirrings and catchings.

How to file the weights of a long-case and curb a pendulum's harried stroke.

How, in a house full of clocks, none were wound though all were primed, capable of telling time.

How well-tuned parts, interlocking wheels, need smooth bearings, feelings ringed round.

For what were feelings only pots of milk boiled fit to overflow?

September wasps in the kitchen steam?

A blundering pup, its lead in knots?

Allow a cultivated bed to choke with bindweed and what would you show but hard work undone? How did we know that love was no dandelion clock to blow?

The Worry Chest
by Ann Leahy

For years, I've kept a chest of formal wear. I take it down sometimes to see what I might get rid of, select a pair of slim high heels with ankle strap constrictors, choose a chiffon stole almost too flimsy to fold (and that never, in any case, covered up much).

Then a feather . . . loose from a boa . . .

will spring at me, sink to the floor in a little flutter of unease. A strapless bra will hook the netting of an underskirt to plead its case. Raw silk will fret at its seams, and a zip in vintage georgette will try to stop me in my tracks.

A boned bodice will imply that we're all keeping something back . . .

its hems have bound it to secrecy.

I'll slam the lid, find I'm fingering the beading on a velvet purse as though to pray over a series of old worries.

A pile of gauzy handkerchiefs will end up on my landing smelling of Je Reviens, L'air du Temps, Obsession, Poison.