A Quilt For Dietrich Bonhoeffer Read online

in my iTunes.

  It’s heavy on Yo La Tengo,

  Murray Gold and The BBC National Orchestra of Wales,

  with a helping of The Dirtbombs, Camper Van Beethoven, and Brendan Benson

  and a smidgen of The Gin Blossoms (“Hey Jealousy”).

  But I’ve covered a gamut of novels

  and artists

  while DMC embroidery floss is gently pulled through three layers of a quilt,

  draped over my large table,

  and in some moments resting on the floor.

  It’s an odd moment indeed,

  not for the misplaced quilt-in-the-making

  but the songs from my writing past

  butting up against the fabrics of my present

  surrounded by cottons of the future.

  Or are those songs and stories truly from days gone by?

  Yeah, mostly.

  Those old tales won’t be resurrected,

  not with the quilts aching to be pieced,

  and whatever else I gotta do

  (like, ahem, check the laundry in the washer).

  But I’m still a writer

  (really).

  And I know that because

  this morning I read over a story

  in the wings.

  In between quilts,

  a lit fic novel is waiting

  for me to give it more time

  so it can sit alongside

  other indie novels

  in my stable.

  But quilts have been muscling

  that story right outta the picture.

  Quilts are loud,

  bold,

  and right now still lying partly on the grotto floor.

  Yet novels are sneaky,

  lying in wait inside the music.

  For as I listen to these songs from books nearly forgotten,

  those closer to the surface

  push that e-nor-mo blanket even more on the proverbial floor

  making me remember the feel of a novel under my fingertips.

  It doesn’t hurt like pins stabbing,

  it revives like a quilt wrapped close,

  but instead of heat,

  it’s love,

  between two old flames

  and the burgeoning love affair between soul mates.

  Not to mention the platonic love

  shared by friends for many years,

  or the laundry, still sitting in my washer.

  Actually, laundry has nothing to do with Some Happy Endings

  or the book I’m considering.

  I just added it to the poem

  to remind myself to check it when this piece is done.

  I wonder if I’ll remember;

  I didn’t forget the novels,

  so maybe the laundry will get in the dryer,

  eventually…

  For Julie Rose

  The Ties That Bind

  At the end of April,

  thirty poems have accrued;

  I’m mindful of this endeavor,

  a pretty cool achievement.

  Some poems are better than others,

  but every day this month

  I sat at my computer,

  typing out either a poem written earlier that day,

  or right off the top of my head

  (like this one).

  I might not write tomorrow,

  or maybe I will.

  All I can consider is today.

  Well, today and days past

  as again I peruse old playlists

  from novels gone by.

  Which means days long past,

  which this day will be

  tomorrow

  whether I write a poem or not.

  Today has been spent

  making a quilt binding

  and doing laundry.

  And I won’t forget the laundry

  because a few shirts are hanging in the

  sewing/poetry grotto doorway.

  I won’t forget the binding either,

  which still needs to be ironed in half

  longways

  because the quilt is sitting on my bed

  and the sewing machine has been moved into the grotto.

  (Normally it lives in the living room

  providing this author/seamstress a few extra steps on the old pedometer.)

  Nor will I hasten to lose all I’ve chronicled this month

  in the guise of non-rhyming verse;

  Dietrich and Eberhard and the rest

  are waiting for me to finish this,

  so I can read more letters while eating a toasted bagel with peanut butter.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eberhard Bethge will follow me into May,

  just like quilting and laundry,

  but this poem,

  and those from the previous twenty-nine days

  are set apart;

  they are a special moment,

  part in Lent,

  part in quilts,

  part in my past.

  Which is never far away,

  just ask all the novels I’ve written over the last several years

  still right at the forefront of my brain

  via music.

  We have no idea

  no flipping clue

  how close the past it,

  even if we don’t want it right at our heels.

  And it’s not about

  those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

  It’s about all the threads

  woven together

  that make up our lives.

  Quilts and martyrs,

  poetry and novels,

  music and dirty socks;

  it’s all necessary,

  from R.E.M. and Fleetwood Mac

  to Discordia and Alsace Lorraine

  and Dusty Springfield.

  Those artists represent The Two Dans, a novel basically about…

  Love, which is all my books,

  poems too,

  concern.

  For, if I have quilts and poems and clean knickers,

  knowledge about a German pastor killed in 1945 by the Nazis,

  more musicians that is good for a person

  but not love,

  I’m a clanging gong,

  a resounding cymbal,

  or something like that.

  I’m like that long winding binding

  unattached to the quilt,

  blowing in the wind.

  But soon enough, I’ll press that binding in half,

  sew it on the front perimeter of the quilt,

  iron it toward the back,

  then hand-stitch it in place

  while I watch baseball, or maybe even playoff basketball.

  (Go Warriors!)

  And maybe I’ll have written,

  and possible even posted, another poem.

  Or maybe not.

  But this I know;

  I will have loved.

  Somehow, some way,

  I will have loved.

  About the Author

  Anna Scott Graham was born in 1966 in Northern California. A mother to several, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and more than a few quilts.