Woman Knitting

The park sprawls like a piece of heaven,
limbs open and all.
An old woman on a bird-shat bench hides
yarn in her windbreaker.
She chews the air with a toppled mouth, slashed
with last week’s lipstick and teeth.
I can’t see her eyes,
I can’t see what she knits,
perhaps it is rubies, diamonds, teardrops,
or only this:
a thin worm of string,
fuzz splotched like mold, curled
around a wasted knuckle, hanging
itself on the needle’s blade.