The mother fed her children blackberries 
sewed them clothes from the skins of mice 
kept life whirring along in a tempest 
her tongue a needle darning stories 
from the firey log in the kitchen.

The children were sweet and gray 
their fingers shaped like thimbles 
the soft gray of their nimble hands 
whirring like needles darning summer 
under the watchful example of the dragonfly.

Often as she tucked them to sleep 
deep in the blackberry night 
her tongue would weave forests 
and oceans, witches and caves 
a mouse gathering songs from stars.

In the gray dawn she would pick 
the dreams from their lashes 
wash the punctuation from their eyes 
and roll the small grains of sand into beads 
which she strung with a needle.

All their long lives she made necklaces, 
eardrops, fables and picnics, the long 
whirr of her tellings the sounds of 
their living, the tempest of quilt, 
the storm of crochet, the lover of knit.

They slept with their grown gray hands 
outside the coverlets she made 
and their dreams grew into epic 
and novel following the woven events 
of their blackberry lives.