Heirloom Quilt

Grandmother’s Flower Garden
patched together,1930,
six cotton hexagons
calico-ed in a circle
surrounded by twelve more;
a dozen of bouquets
lavender and yellow
pale green with pink,
yellow against light blue
flowered and dotted;
ginghamed and striped.
Hand stitched from one decade
into the next. These scraps bind
daughter to mother
to grandmother and beyond.
Each bit of fabric a remnant
of the times.
A dress for the dance,
Sunday’s best, skirts for school,
shirts and shorts for play,
house dresses and aprons,
protecting their threadbare lives,
every scrap saved and stitched,
each cotton flower a story passed on.

Annette L. Grunseth, Green Bay, is a freelance writer who has been published in Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ annual calendars, Wisconsin Academy Review, Midwest Prairie Review, Free Verse, The Door Voice, Fox Cry Review, Poetry of Cold, and Peninsula Pulse.