Today I’m going to a baby shower. My gift will be a quilt that I’ve pieced together using fabric blocks saved by my grandmother and great aunt. I don’t know if Simone (I love it that baby already has a name) will be a quilter, but I love passing down this part of my German heritage to a new generation.

In that light, today’s poem is about quilting and patterns. This poem is in the form of a pantoum, a form that has a lot of repetition. The second and fourth lines of every stanza become the first and third lines of the next stanza, and the last stanza ties back to the first.

 

Patterns

 

On Grandmother’s quilt

my love and I lie,

patched over time,

ties coming unknotted.

 

My love and I lie

or sometimes speak truth,

ties coming unknotted,

bridal blue washed to gray.

 

Truth sometimes speaks

through rumpled up sheets,

bridal blue washed to gray,

quieting our questions.

 

Through rumpled up sheets

love sighs old refrain,

quieting our questions.

The pattern reappears.

 

Love sighs old refrain.

Called through the years,

our pattern reappears,

uncovered, laid bare.

 

Called through the years,

patched over time,

uncovered, laid bare,

on grandmother’s quilt.