January 2022
Bio Note: I wrote this poem during the covid surge of last winter when my area was on lockdown. I am a Midwestern high school teacher and Poetry Club advisor. I serve on the board of the Council for Wisconsin Writers and I am English language editor for Poetry Hall: A Chinese and English Bilingual Journal.
Maybe the Greek Symbol for Woman is Really a Needlework Hoop
Embroidered cloth trills its story
in bright thread. Hmong women
recount steps on sloped terrain,
a remote highland life with mist-swirled
ancestors, crops, meandering
chickens and children. Farmers
in black clothes accented
with vivid sashes
follow cycles of the sun
until this ethereal mountain tune
turns to lament—advancing soldiers
and the flight through thick forest,
a reckoning with the merciless
current of the Mekong.
My mother drowned in crossing,
Mai said, touching my forearm.
Her eyes have become the river.
By amber lamplight, Black women
pieced quilts as bold as flags
to guide travelers on secret byways.
No way to know who survived.
Generations of my Mennonite mothers
cut up their little girls’ worn out dresses
rearranging scraps of childhood
into intricate wedding quilts.
Their daughters vowed to obey husbands
unto death.
I focus on finishing the quilting
of my own hand-pieced bedspread.
The dead drawing ever closer
as even close friends are pierced
with grief. Solitary evenings
my needle weaves back and forth
from the quilt top, tight in its hoop,
to the other side I cannot see.
Firm thread rasps through cloth
in its solemn binding
of this patterned firmament
to some darkened pale mirror.
©2022 Sylvia Cavanaugh
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