Sewing Circle

This is for the ladies who donate their time to knit and sew for  the patients in the Pediatric Heart Center at UCSF, San Francisco.  Many years ago, the Doctors in this amazing hospital literally saved the life of a young lady that I know, the daughter of my daughter's best friend. We visited the little one several times at the hospital and learned that all the babies are given free blankets and snuggies, knitted hats and the like.  

Sewing Circle

They don’t require, nor have they kept
a penny for their tender task.
The comfort sewn as tears are wept,
a finer wage they couldn't ask.

As mothers wait and pray aloud
that hope may live forever thus
the quiet artists, shy and proud,
construct, of cloth, a loving truss.

To help support the cause of hope,
their time is spent, compassion sewn,
to soothe the ones who have to cope
with fear that most have never known.

From in the heart and high above,
from nothing asked, a quilt of good—
a sewing circle made of love,
of universal motherhood.

~ Dean Neighbors~

Dreamer By Default

I balance on a pitching deck
between the sea and sky...
aboard my sturdy ship of life
and try to fathom why

the Lord would choose to make a simple
mariner like me,
my head lost in the distant stars,
my spirit in the sea.

As I set course for shore and home...
it's freedom I exalt.
I'll fill my sails with faith alone,
a dreamer by default.

Echo From a Silent Heart

For Mom


Memories of memories
          imperfect and surreal,
copies made of copies of
          a loss that others feel.

Photographs and traces of
          the one who was my world,
black and white reminders of
          a pretty little girl.

Questions ask me questions
           but answers don't reply,
the echo from a silent heart
           can never tell me why.

The gray and faded image,
            the mother she became,
what do we have in common now
            beyond our common name?

A tattered family bible holds
            a note penned by her hand,
pieces of another's past
            I'll never understand.

And if I ask the questions
            will answers that I find
restore the faded image in
            the bottom of my mind?

Memories of memories
             imperfect and surreal,
copies made of copies of
             the pain I'll always feel.

Circle Circles

The circle circles roundabout
and finds a way to, neatly, close
without a pause or any doubt.
You’re smiling Mother, I suppose,
for now it’s mine to hold the hand
to soothe the ego, slightly bruised,
to wipe away the tear drops and
repeat the phrases often used…

“My little one, ignore the pain--
tomorrow brings another dawn.
No rose can grow without the rain.
Until the fear and pain are gone

I’ll hold you thus, encircle you
as circles must--- as father's do."

Wages

“In timeless magic, lofty trees
don blankets made of virgin snow…”
This imagery is sewn to please
in ways that only poets know.

Inquire of nature, “What’s the time?”
and watch the day sink into night,
but hear the image in a rhyme
and see without the need for sight.

For life and love and beauty’s sake,
at banquets spread in poets minds,
of metered sweetness men partake
in verses of the many kinds.

What then could poet’s wages be
but joy and peace-- and sanity?