A line will take us hours maybe
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught
— William Butler Yeats, “Adam’s Curse.”

We string together words
crafting
creating what was not there before
and think them so precious

to take some away
kill off whole lines or sections
makes our pulses race
and yet

as a knitter toiling
for weeks on a sweater
may notice something
that she does not like
about the pattern
or the drape
and may sacrifice the whole
thinking nothing
of pulling out all
the skeins and restarting
with this better plan in mind

so must we be willing to frog
our lines, too
tear them out stitch by stitch
row by row
so that the later finished product
seems effortless
just as it was meant to be

Judge’s Comments:
The lack of punctuation (which would not be a good choice in many other poems) does serve this poem well; the form of the poem fits its content because the words become one long strand, one fiber from stanza to stanza.