Moving Through The Beige by Linda Boyden
![[Meditation Tapestry by Valerie Willson]](meditation-tapestry.jpg)
With deliberate purpose,
I weave on my loom of life,
A tapestry of cautious restraint.
Neutral skeins of thread
Warp and weft my story--
No danger. No chances. No vibrance.
Linear motion above a toneless safety net.
Without warning,
A shock of vermilion flows through the strand;
Eludes my guiding hand,
Establishes itself into the weave.
An unwelcomed guest
Threatening to devour the entire banquet,
A ruinous addition to the control of the piece.
It grows--
From a perfect tapestry,
Into something beyond my control.
As life itself
Splits, divides, fuses without permission.
I watch it mutate from my plan,
Infected with chaos.
At first chance,
The vermilion evolves into aspen gold,
Brightens next into saffron swirls,
Intricacies too astonishing to behold.
I close my eyes,
Paralyzed with delight.
Feel the power of its beauty
Course through my fingers,
Forcing awake visceral reactions
I believed I had cemented
In the beige of middle age.
BIO: Linda Boyden has spent most of her adult life leading children to literacy. From 1970-1997, she taught in elementary schools in Maryland, Nevada, Montana, and Virginia. In 1997, Linda decided to change careers and abandoned full-time teaching for full-time writing. In 2002, her first picture book, The Blue Roses, was published by Lee & Low Books. It was the recipient of Lee and Low Books' first New Voices Award in the year 2000, the 2003 Paterson Prize in its age category, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers' Book of the Year, Children's Literature, 2002-2003, and was included on the prestigious CCBC (Cooperative Children's Book Center) 2003 Choices list of recommended titles.
Linda is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers. She enjoys doing author visits and storytelling at schools and libraries across the country. She has recently had her first chapbook of poems published, WomanSong, and a CD of her Native American storytelling, Dikanohelvsdi Elisi Unitseli, Stories of the Grandmothers, and her first storytelling DVD, Grammy Linda and Her Magic Window. EMAIL: comments@moondance.org