Editor’s note: This poem is part of the Work and Hope series.

every year she plowed neat furrows of stitches
upon a quilt or two.    she saved old clothes,
took them apart, mounded colours as vegetables
or fruit to preserve into patterns, puzzles, softly-
rounded landscapes, memories of what she wore.

for her daughter’s special quilt, she purchased
fabric instead.   the daughter laughed at the odd
procedures of patchwork, cutting apart to sew
back together again, then chose Crossed Wedding
Rings in blue though she would never marry.

for the auction fundraiser it was Ohio Roses,
which took an entire weary winter of identical
blooms but fetched the highest price that year
for overseas relief.   every hour, then, well spent
on grain for starving folks somewhere in a desert.

for herself, she picked through the scraps for
Trip Around the World, though she didn’t travel
otherwise, fragments joined for surprises in the
rows, lines to unexpected places, tiny green geese
swimming to a poppied sea, fish and leaves and
plaids lifting their heads to red and navy sky.