[Poem] Wedding Quilt

This poem was the winner of the Bailieborough Poetry Festival competition 2013. Poets were invited to ‘quilt a poem’ in response to visual images of quilts.

This is the quilt that inspired Annette, and it prompted this tender poem which recognises each element of the patchwork as honouring, and binding, the fragile elements of a family’s lives together.

You can hear Annette reading the poem aloud here.

Wedding Quilt

Here’s amethyst
for love enduring,
the flicker of fire
on the skin.

Set in saffron,
the golden threads
of word and gesture
that weave us together.

To make this bond holy,
marigold crosses:
a pattern scored in rock
high on Massmount.

For our children,
sprays of grasses,
tangled in hair
after love in the open.

A net of sea and sky
to hold us fast,
to keep in mind
what lies beyond us.

Here is our morning
and evening,
our Book of Days,
our Reliquary.