My childhood blooms
from a white house, with a log
house pulsing underneath (you
can see the wood bones when you
open the closets), and there is still
in the living room of that house, the
window, framed by a filmy curtain,
delicately pulled back, by which
my grandma sat and quilted; her hands,
always her hands moving, needle in and out
of fabric from many places: a discarded
shirt, feed sack, house dress. There, too,
are still the strands of sun, that once fell
over her sewing basket, and, used to,
I would pick up remnant squares myself
and sew them together, though
as a child my stitches were long and
strayed, but in the sunlight my
grandma thought them perfect, small,
and straight like an arrow.
She gave me a quilt, made in a
pattern called Spiderweb, and she
said, "It's because you helped make
it". And there were the Spiderwebs
I created: geometrical rings of
cloth, moving outward like rings
made from a rock thrown in a
still pond. The house still stands, and
the window, though the ceilings sag, and
the floors sink, and there is no rocker in
the window where grandma used to sit.
Still, my childhood blooms and my life vines
out from these things.
Stop and remember.
The feeling of the needle and thread.
