Kansas City winter night, my daughter
sits knitting a wool scarf for her business,
softly singing of Tibetans slaughtered
in Lhasa, of their artisans impressed
into textile mills, of a nun dying
in Drapchi Prison just last month. She leans
her head back, eyes closed, now nearly crying,
voice almost a whisper while revealing
the reprise: “Free Tibet, oh, free Tibet.”
Knitting needles pause in their nodding dance.
Her hands raise the scarf, study wool ringlets
for any flaw. Then her earth-deep eyes glance
at me. “What would you do,” they seem to say,
“if soldiers came here and took me away?”
Roger Armbrust
March 13, 2002
