Blanket Stories: Textile Society, R.R. Stewart, Ancient One

A site-specific installation for the United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan

56.
Colin McArthur
Portland, OR

“Pull up the covers” you reply
cold fingers under our shirts
laid on the earth
small us together
under the night.

A tender sheet
The surface of our eyes,
stretched over all horizons;
  soft places
            bones
  hills and valleys suggest
            the hidden organs of the world.

This blanket is also a bridge:
Carries night, day, all shapes,
turtles, snakes, rabbits,
We, same as all blood filled things,
on feet and bellies moving
from one life to the next
across this tender sheet.

Heart beat and heavy breath
vibrate up through us from below-
birth   a walk though life   birth again
-carrying the waves
of greater bodies,
we structures shaken
by forces we can’t see the source of.

“We are here to feel,
all of us to feel, together” you say,
seemingly in reply to a vast silence.
We shift under the covers
as the earth turns with us.