Scarlet Yarn

There is a thread of blood
unspooled,
spilled,
running red yarn,
slipping down shun faces,
Jericho walls,

woven
through pages of man,
flowing annoying string,
down thorn-planted brows,
rock-beaten skulls,
bowed in submission,
in love stronger than death,
flowing from caverns and prisons,
tables of torture,

great scarlet skeins
filling gutters and wastelands
down rough broken ages,
ministering healing,
a silent midnight nurse,

stitching Autumn leaves
scattered by cold winds
into libraries of volumes, leather-bound,
ephemeral made triumphal,
chronicles of real people,
surreptitiously by candle-light,
worthy to be read.