A Crazy Quilt by Douglas Malloch

They do not make them anymore,

For quilts are cheaper at the store

Than woman’s labor, though a wife

Men think the cheapest thing in life.

But now and then a quilt is spread

Upon a quaint old walnut bed,

A crazy quilt of those days

That I am old enough to praise.

Some woman-sewed these points and squares

Into a pattern like life’s cares.

Here is a velvet that was strong,

The poplin that she wore so long,

A fragment from her daughter’s dress,

Like her, a vanished loveliness;

Old patches of such things as these,

Old garments and old memories.

And what is life?

A crazy quilt;

Sorrow and joy, grace and guilt,

With here and there a square of blueFor some old happiness we knew;

And so the hand of time will take

The fragments of our lives and make,

Out of life’s remnants,

as they fall,

A thing of beauty, afterall.