Cotton and Spirit (for my writing group)

As women for centuries before us
wove stories into fabric, we now
in a circle of language, gather poems.

Piece together shadows of memory;
layer the tenuous texture of adjectives,
stitch in the pure geometry of nouns,
the swirling pattern of adverbs.

Verbs push and pull
their way through our creations.
We bind truth with myth;
line it with stiff shouldered sorrow,
fasten on falling down happiness.

Then pull the cover of poetry over us,
as our grandmothers once did
with quilts they fashioned
out of cotton and spirit.