Water Quilt

Water Quilt
by Ron Rash

The truck bed blossomed with sleep’s cloth
each April my grandmother made
her son cross the parkway, jolt down
old logging roads to Laurel Creek,
the only water she believed
pure enough to rinse away the silt
of work grime, worry, fever,
mother and son unfurling
what she had stitched together,
working each quilt like a seine
through current quickened to white,
soaked so thoroughly some part
of water stayed in the cloth,
flowed through it forever,
so she told me one night,
let my fingers confirm
the bed’s cool, damp surface
before my eyes closed and I slept
deep beneath the whisper of water.

     Waking
     Hub City Press, October 2011