What gives meaning to simple things?
Is there a song that reminds you of a particular time or place in your life? Perhaps there is a food that makes you think of a special person or holiday? Even a scent can remind you of a time, place, or person.
Symbols are people, places, or things that stand for or represent something beyond themselves. Writers often use them to convey complex ideas in a few words. For example, in the poem you are about to read, quilts and quilting represent something more significant than the object or activity.
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 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 at night
oh how you stretched and turned and rearranged y
our michigan spring faded curtain pieces
my father’s santa fe workshirt
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 put the lilac purple of easter against the
red plaid of winter-going-into-spring
whether to mix a yellow with a 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
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 plainview cotton rows
into tuberculosis 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