Soliloquy NaPoWriMo #1

They say our air mustn’t cross paths

on the way to our lungs.


But I have companions in this isolation –

Sometimes when I look down

I see my mother’s legs

complete with knee-knobs, and my hands

wear her fingers shaped by arthritis.


My dad is visiting

when I glance into a mirror.

There his face shadows

my own:  his nose, the shape

of his smile walking over my mouth.



And how your eyes mapped every inch

of my skin -- all over me, tiny miracles

from you are here, so alive!

That’s when I realize we need not touch

to be touched.


J. Pratt-Walter, 4/1/2020

Quilt of Sound

Mom made quilts the way I write music –

colors coursing along and turning to face

new and unexpected friends,

each shade and chime an atlas

of melody and harmony cupped in union.

Mom started very simply –

ten rows of six by six blocks,

leftover fabrics from sewing our clothes.

But Nine-Patch gave itself over to Friendship Star

to Drunkard’s Path in its labyrinthine circus.

I heard the simplest melodies

skating along in my thoughts,

then built a forest of music and rhythm

bowing under its own weight to touch the Earth

or offering itself to skies and fires and hearts.

Eventually, quilt or song, they mapped a new universe

stringing dissonance in its angular way

to pools of consonance, to a divine resolution

or not.

And my songs now?  Their notes hover over the quilts

and touch down like larkspur petals,

like an eyelash, like moth tracks,

a fabric of air woven upon my harp saying

“Hi, mom.  I will always remember you.”

J. Pratt-Walter, (c) 2018