Stitching It In

—Anonymous Quilt Photos

—Poems by Romella Kitchens, Pittsburgh, PA

PIERCING

Needle
Thread

I made a quilt of Black birds

Sewing the forms into flight and fervid existence

Green grass hued borders—a backdrop of sky...

A yellow bird
A blue bird
Thread up through these then that red bird placed just
so like a heart pacing out wing beats

Beautiful comes to me through silken thread of these and the lone 

black bird joyfully winging to meet up with its flock...
and, right there beneath my finger the needle carefully

stitching it in, that "every day" brown bird other people may
simply disregard

THE ROOM OF LIFE

The room of life clears out so quickly, the clock of expectancy set back that way.

When we are young, there are many beautiful faces.

The days are wise and the young souls flourish.

Then comes the accident, the sorrows.

Even then the numbers are still large—but less.

The middle years trundle forth and man shows less mercy towards man and the body has awkward necessities and ailments which can shave the numbers down as if prime cedar wood even more.

Then, we are wiser and older and know the Reaper’s path down the aisles.

The room grows less warm with so few left, yet we cherish each other and our recollections...

Cherish our time.

WHEN BOB MARLEY DIED

One of the staples in the magazine giving details of who and why he was pinched my finger and I wept remembering his last concert in Pittsburgh

and being there with a lover whose hand was so warm in mine.

I thought, man, time has to keep going from here but could it slow down just a little.

He was beautiful, his skin was golden, his hair this proud lion's mane of dreadlocks.

He didn't seem sick.
He didn't seem sick, I kept saying, looking at his chiseled cheek bones on the album cover.

Sometimes the sand gets blown by urgency all over the beach, up to where the people stay and they can not ignore the storm.

A drifting storm of life with sorrow but genius as well.
He smiled. He loved the love of the crowd, almost shyly, as if it
was something new in an alternately hard life.

PEACEFUL POEMS

We live in a world that needs peaceful poems and peaceful people.

Fold the paper of the poem over and over and hand it to someone who needs fortitude.

Over and over.
Over and over.

Place poems everywhere the horror would be instead.

Gift them to things and people you love.

Gift then to the post man, the cool waiter, an arpeggio poem to the legs of a dancer.

Spread a poem out about the avoidance of an apathetic life and read it at dinner

to someone who cannot put away their cell phone long enough to communicate with you.

Read a poem about starlight in front of a painting by Van Gogh.

Seek rivers of reality and extol them.

We as a world need the poem you have written that says the hateful of the world

make you weep and that you will not live in the darkness of that hate—not once,

not less ever again.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

The eldest ones said that the laughter and tears are sewn right into the quilt, part and parcel, stitch by stitch. Emotions, experiences, heartbreak, mourning, pain and regret, stitched into the cloth, along with happiness, satisfaction, cheer, comfort, and love. The finished quilts were a living thing, a reflection of the spirits of its creators.

—Arlene Stafford-Wilson, Memories Among the Maples

____________________

—Medusa, with many thanks and welcome back to Romella Kitchens, who was featured in the Kitchen on 3/23/16.

 Celebrate poetry—and art in all its various forms. 

As Romella says, “Gift it to things and people you love.”

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.