Unicorn Needlepoint by Barbara Mattio

I did this needlepoint a number of years ago.Then I was In NYC with an art professor friend of mine. We went to the Cloisters, which is part of the Metropedian Museum of Art, where the tapestries are kept. I got to see the original of my unicorn. The Cloisters was beautiful and filled with tapestries from the era of courtly love.

Love comes in so many varieties. It’s Valentine’s Day and some people have lovers and some don’t. Don’t be sad about it. Because there is love everywhere in the world. All that is needed is to open your eyes and look and you will see it. There is familial love, love for friends, love for the woman who is being beaten, love for the people who have mentored and supported you as you took on new experiences. There is the friend who is there for you every day, no matter what time it is.

The secret of love is to give it away. It isn’t like a pie which you can only cut up into so many pieces. With love the more you give away, the more that will come back to you. People aren’t really strangers, we just haven’t met them yet.

The Tiger

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water‘d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

—William Blake

Lavender rose raised and photographed by Barbara Mattio

LLa