Beth Camp Historical Fiction

Friday, October 18, 2019

OctPoWriMo #18: A Quilter's Patience

I have collected this aboriginal fabric,
inspired by Australian culture,
now tucked in a little blue bin.
Enough for a quilt, but I’m waiting for inspiration.
I don’t want to stitch up alternating squares or blocks
in a borrowed European hierarchy,
but some design
that captures the essence of those aboriginal maps,
where each mark carries meaning.
I’m waiting, hoping the ‘right’ pattern
searches for me,
maybe discovered in a dream
or inspired by dreamtime.
Maybe that design already lives in my heart.

Beth's fabric bin (2019)
TODAY'S NOTE: The aboriginal art I’ve seen, paintings, maps, and drawings, meanders in circles, with symbols I can’t easily decode. But quilts made of aboriginal fabric (also that I’ve seen so far) impose an artificial order (those blocks), in sharp contrast to the organic, flowing, circular designs of aboriginal paintings. I don’t want to be disappointed (today's prompt) by the design I use, for the fabric is so lovely, evocative of a culture thousands of years old.

You can see some of the images I've collected of aboriginal art at my Pinterest site here:

Aboriginal art (Pixabay)


Tomorrow's prompt: Purple (this prompt should be easier since purple is the favorite color of a dear quilting friend).

You can visit OctPoWriMo at http://www.octpowrimo.com/ to read what others have written. Thank you, Morgan Dragonwillow, Michelle Vecchitto, Esther Jones, and Maria L. Berg for hosting this month-long poetry challenge.

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