BIRDSONG

TEXTILE: Seed Packet Quilt

At the ironmonger's I wander,

Losing my place in the queue,

Hovering back and forth to the seed packets.

Vegetables or flowers?

Shall I fill the kitchen with pickles and pies,

Or feast my eyes on hollyhock towers?

Quilting gives this same

Overwhelming feeling:

Should I buy all that material,

 For hours and hours revelling

In textures and colours and contrasts,

In the hope of it one day coming to fruition, 

Knowing there's a risk

It might just sit in a drawer

Hopeful,

Promise-ful,

While I dream 

Of cosy days,

Of a laden table and full vases,

Heavy summer scents in evening air,

And grandchildren

Rambling like roses,

Jammy and tousled like a Nelly Mosa.

We will quilt them blue skies,

Neatly edging storms away.

We will sing them blue skies,

And laugh in golden sun.

They will have souls better than ours,

Tempered with mercy,

And they will grow warm and strong and real,

Not empty dreams, 

Like the fragile packets at the sunless ironmonger's.

Theirs will be a real and everlasting summer,

Peace in our time.

Let us patch together

Peace in our time.

*************************************

Today the heads of government meet in Brussels to agree the break-up of the European Union. The European Union was invented after Two World Wars killed billions of individuals in the space of Thirty years. The UK strongly backed the formation of the new European alliance to try to unite peoples and prosperity, to combine efforts to develop in Europe together, so stopping the habit of wars in Europe. This break-up of Union is caused by the UK, which may itself break into separate tiny countries as a consequence. Citizens will become subjects again. 

All that was fought for is hanging by a thread.

Tapestries.

Quilts.

Patching together.

* NELLY MOSA - a beautiful peaches-tinged-with-red, perfumed rambling rose, with heady scent.

*PEACE IN OUR TIME

"Peace for our time" was a declaration made by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Neville Chamberlain in his 30 September 1938 speech concerning the Munich Agreement and the Anglo-German Declaration.[1] The phrase echoed Benjamin Disraeli, who, upon returning from the Congress of Berlin in 1878, stated, "I have returned from Germany with peace for our time". It is primarily remembered for its ironic value: less than a year after the agreement, the continued pressure for return of the Polish corridor by Hitler, and subsequently the invasion of Poland, was followed by declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.

It is often misquoted as "peace in our time", which had appeared long before in the Book of Common Prayer as "Give peace in our time, O Lord", probably based on the 7th-century hymn "Da pacem Domine! in diebus nostris, Alleluja".[2] It is unknown how deliberate Chamberlain's use of such a similar term was."  (Wikipedia)

Image of artist Kaffe Fassett's "Seed Packet Quilt" Pic by Brandon Mably Wikipedia Page (permitted use)

Quilt image prompted this poem. It's in birdsong because all along I thought about the birds who usually eat the seed from my efforts at planting but somehow I didn't get to mention the birds this time!

November 25, 2018.