Poetry Friday: Quilt

My mom took up quilting around the time I was in sixth grade. She's been quilting ever since. Hand quilting. Done the old-fashioned way with love and time and planning. Usually she's got several going at once. Even if she's not quilting at the moment...she's almost always thinking about quilting, planning out the next big project. Our relationship is predictable. She sews a quilt. I see her doing it. And with each block, I proclaim: "mine!" More often than not the response is "No, not yours." There will never be a quilt she makes that I won't love, that I won't want, that I don't see as beautiful. Right now her big project is a brown quilt--a scrap, patchy kind of quilt. So when I found this poem by Janet Wong, I thought it was perfect, just perfect for me. The picture, by the way, is of my green elephant quilt. I fell in LOVE with this fabric and ended up buying over five yards of it during the course of a year. (To leave me with some dignity, the last two yards were when it was clearanced.)

Wong, Janet. 1996. A suitcase of seaweed and other poems.

Quilt by Janet Wong

Our family
is a quilt

of odd remnants
patched together

in a strange
pattern,

threads fraying,
fabric wearing thin--

but made to keep
its warmth

even in bitter
cold.

Today's poetry round-up is at A Wrung Sponge.