Collected Poetry
I was not blessed with much talent...I'm particularly horrible at writing poetry. But I've always loved it...the way some poems pull you in, or how other pieces are totally YOU in every respect. I started collecting poetry in 8th grade. I haven't found a lot, but what I do have can tell you a lot about who I am...and what I like...moreso and better than even I could. So feel free to enjoy these poems....maybe they'll mean as much to you as they do to me. (there aren't many yet, so please do read them all)
My Mother Pieced Quilts
they were just meant as covers
in winters
as weapons
against pounding january winds
but it was just that every morning I awoke to these
october ripened canvases
passed by my hand across their cloth faces
and began to wonder how you pieced
all these together
these strips of gentle communion cotton and flannel nightgowns
wedding organdies
dime store velvets
how you shaped patterns square and oblong and round
positioned
balanced
then cemented them
with your thread
a steel needle
a thimble
how the thread darted in and out
galloping along the frayed edges, tucking them in
as you did us that night
oh how you stretched and turned and re-arranged
your michigan spring faded curtain pieces
my father's sante fe work shirt
the summer denims, the tweeds of fall
in the evening you sat at your canvas
-our cracked linoleum floor the drawing board
me lounging on your arm
and you staking out the plan:
whether to pull the lilac purple of easter against the red plaid of winter-going-into-spring
whether to mix a yellow with blue and white and paint the
corpus christi noon when my father held your hand
whether to shape a five-point star from the
somber black silk you wore to grandmother's funeral
you were the river current
carrying the roaring notes
forming them into pictures of a little boy reclining
a swallow flying
you were the caravan master at the reins
driving your threaded needle artillery across the mosaic cloth bridges
delivering yourself in separate testimonies.
oh mother you plunged me sobbing and laughing
into our past
into the river crossing at five
into the spinach fields
into the plain view cotton rows
into tuburculosis wards
into braids and muslin dresses
sewn hard and taut to withstand the thrashings of twenty-five years
stretched out they lay
armed/ready/shouting/celebrating
knotted with love
the quilts sing on
-- unknown
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Email: ping_86@hotmail.com
