The mother fed her children blackberries,
sewed them clothes from the skins of mice,
kept life whirring along in a tempest
her tongue a needle darning stories
from the fiery log in the kitchen.
The children were sweet and pale,
their fingers shaped like thimbles,
the soft gray of their nimble hands
whirring like needles darning summer
under the watchful eye of the dragonfly.
Often as she tucked them to sleep
deep in the blackberry night
her tongue would weave forests
and oceans, witches and caves,
a mouse gathering songs from stars.
In the gray dawn she would pick
the dreams from their lashes,
wash punctuation from their eyes,
roll the small grains of sand into beads
which she strung with a needle.
All their long lives she made necklaces,
eardrops, fables and picnics, the long
whir of her tellings the sounds of
their living, the tempest of quilt,
the storm of crochet, acceptance of knit.
They slept with their grown gray hands
resting on the coverlets she made
and their dreams grew into novel
and epic following the woven events
of their blackberry lives.