The fate of all | does Frigg know well,
Though herself she says it not.
— Lokasenna 

Anything done well with seemingly little effort is called magic.
A line of knots
knotted to another
knotted line,
something from
(almost) nothing,

a pattern established,
a familiar story
acknowledged with a silent, sideways glance,
knowing but silent,
so she can no longer
be accused of making something from (almost) nothing.

Knuckles knotted in resignation,
deep-cornered mouth,
she sees generations,
backward and forward,
lines of knots forming fabric
to shelter,
to smother,
to disguise

so shrewdly she did not see
lines of knots forming a noose.
All the knowledge in all the worlds,
all the patterns she had learned,
yet she could not save her child.

Too smart for your own good — 
a threat, covert yet potent
because she was
a threat, covert yet potent.

She is the sad smile at the doomed attempt. She
could be Queen of Heaven,
but she prefers to live in a bog,
awaiting those who seek mud-squelched
hibernation, hospitable hush,
amphibious womb.

[Katherine Heigh is an emerging writer of poetry and short fiction from Peterborough, Ontario. The recipient of the 2015 P.K. Page Poetry Prize, her work has appeared The River Magazine, Chickenscratch: An Anthology of Student Writing, and the forthcoming anthology Voices de Queer Femmes VOL. II. Her first chapbook collection, PTBO NSA, will be published by bird buried press in the autumn of 2018.]