Poem: Meditations in the stitches of a baby quilt

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Meditations in the stitches of a baby quilt

“Pins and needles” tingle
in my fingers
while I push
a tiny needle
through calico
in a quilt for my
unborn grandson.

Years on computer keys
and the bands over nerves
in my wrists
tightened
like a swaddling blanket
too snug: carpal tunnel. However,

my forearms are mighty,
said the chiropractor.
Like the pen.

But not my hands. Knitters fly,
their needles flapping wool sleeves
like the startled wings of pigeons.
I can’t fly that way.

The baby who will squirm
in this quilt will be startled
and cry. Right here in this quilt,
and it will likely be me
who will one day alarm him
with inadvertent
painful surprise
to us both
and I, too, will cry.

This baby will understand
much. He will surprise me
with the utterly
new and completely ordinary
all his own.

My aching hands will pick
him up, worrying
that I could drop him
in a terrifying
moment of weakness. Causing
pain

like when my son
two days old felt the poke
of a needle into his heel
in a bilirubin test
poor jaundiced boy, intentionally
bled for the good of the whole.
I had to escape
to the soft hall
to muffle his cry through the door

like feeling the needle poke
through these cotton layers to find
my left middle finger
on the other side!

Nice name for a boy, bilirubin: Billy Reuben.
Grandpa Reuben. O happy bouncing
knees of old time me. I did not understand
the pain of losing his gabardine lap
in one stroke. Sad, shiny wheel chair.
Downturned moustache.

I’ll wheel him around, this one
before he can walk. Happy
prospect: You will walk.

I have one life to give you.

And you will run it through
in the meadow like
this tiny needle through calico —
     goldenrod, Timothy grass, thistle.

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