The silk you require

Fibres made in figure eights

create the bave, the safe shell

for the silkworm to transform

along the conveyor belt

these cocoons of such promise,

gently bounce-bump off each other

spin out into thin thread,

reeled on the wheel into skeins

before they have an idea of an idea

before they have the autonomy

to know autonomy, a million strands

will rest on skin, harvested for comfort.

They are sorted by size and colour,

how they will perform on the loom,

dead and alive alike

catch light.

Glen Wilson is a multi-award winning Poet from Portadown. He won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing (2017), the Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Award (2018), the Trim Poetry competition (2019), and Slipstream Open Poetry competition (2021). His collection An Experience on the Tongue is available now.