A Quilt Made of Love

(written for an AIDS program at our local high school)

©1997 by Susan Noyes Anderson

When I was a child, my very best thing

was to snuggle up warm under grandmother’s quilt.

Every patch was a memory, stitched up with love;

every square a reminder, painstakingly built,

of birthdays and holidays, weddings and dreams,

of laughter and tears sewn in resolute seams…

beginnings and endings, first times and last days,

golden threads of a family, tied intricate ways.

A quilt made of love, not of cotton or fill,

but of love, freely shared; I am warmed by it still.

******

The AIDS quilt has traveled through cities and states,

extending the borders by which we are bound,

inviting each heart to reflect on expressions

of love, spilled in patches and squares on the ground.

At Washington’s feet, o’er the land of the free, lies

a blanket, a monument, growing too fast…

and spreading, like wildflowers sprinkled on hills,

vivid flashes of color and beauty that pass

into cold, frozen earth as the winter begins,

into pieces of quilt upon quilt upon quilt …

Every patch is a memory, stitched up with love;

every square a reminder, painstakingly built,

of birthdays and holidays, weddings and dreams …

of laughter and tears sewn in resolute seams…

beginnings and endings, first times and last days,

golden threads of a nation, tied intricate ways.

A quilt made of love, not of cotton or fill,

but of love, freely shared; we are warmed by it still.

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