The Silent Hymn of a Quilt

The Silent Hymn of a Quilt

for Mom

I lie beneath and am warmed by each careful stitch,

Made in the slowness of time, though always were

You rushing against some deadline, some memorial

Celebration, a moment you sought to capture with

And through and in each loving stitch. Each stitch

Contains the meaning of the moments you spent

Crafting: your mind, your hands, the years given

To develop your skills, the mother who taught you,

The mother who taught her, the wind, whose chill

First gave birth to the necessity, events long forgotten:

What memories filled your mind while you made it?

Mother and child share many moments: I entered

This world, leaving the world contained within you,

Screaming, and you offered me a blanket then, too.

It gave me security, a surrogate to fill your absence,

Though you have never really been gone, always there

To read me books, to tuck me in, to calm the fears

Of night and day. Side by side, lying on another such

Creation, I was lost, crying, seeking something solid

To hold as the world around me changed as it does.

You didn’t take me from it, pulling me out to some

Fantasy that could not be, but instead, like your quilts,

You wrapped me in your love, like armor to wear

To face whatever must come. Each stitch holds together

Scraps of cloth, purposed elsewhere, the lonely extra

Put to new use, redeemed. I cannot help but see the hope

Embedded, tied together by loving work, that beyond

What our minds’ envision, exist purposes we could never

Dream of, even in our warmest deepest sleep. Yet there

We feel in body and soul, and so know, though words

Fail, and they are the stuff of the mind, there is more.

This attempt at filling the silent hymn of a quilt can but

Scratch the surface of meaning, and so can never define,

Instead can only give witness, as one can only do to love,

As one should only do to God, for such gifts reside where

The flowing rivers of life never cease enough to grasp,

Instead you let them warm your every night with enough

Sacred given love to spread to others in your every day,

Passing on the love you gave with each careful stitch.