The Merkely Quilts

[The Merkelys] had twelve children, of whom nine were girls. . . . Only one of the girls married and the boys died early in life. When the youngest daughter, Ella May, died in 1974 at the age of ninety-eight, a niece found one hundred and fifteen quilts neatly folded in blanket boxes in the attic. -- Ruth McKendry: Quilts and Other Bed Coverings in the Canadian Tradition

In the vanishing photograph
Eli Merkely sits with his fingers folded under
his wife as if with china joints in the chair beside him.

Around them are arrayed
nine daughters. They are not children
Already each has pieced her dozen quilt tops

for her hope chest: Red scraps
saved for Love Apples and warm seeds
in Straight Furrows -- unfinished, folded.

But only one is married.
Their parents pass. Their century
grows older.

Slowly the sisters know
they will not sit down in best chairs,
husband beside them, children ranked around.

In this photograph alone
will they fade into history.
And so, one day,

in the way a line of starlings
decides to lift, they unlock their hope,
send to town for candles, needles, batting in bundles.

They trundle the quilt frame
into the parlour. Shake out the stack
of mill sacks, whip them edge to edge together.

Birds in the Air
and Delectable Mountains.
The Star of Bethlehem

shining behind them
on the difficult road out of this world.