Smithereens Press Chapbooks 'Rootless' by Jennifer Matthews | Page 13

Inheritance Piety is for sale on historic Main Street where mock-Amish quilts boast ‘Humility Blocks’ honouring God by deliberate error, one square turned contrary to the larger pattern. In my mother’s kitchen a fond confession is folded tidily over an oak rack: Great-Grandmother’s work isn’t fussy cut, refuses patterns — no broken-stars, no log cabins. Stitched simply in squares to mark each family birth with the best of a farming woman’s education: Mary Pledger Fowler borned 1892. Wanda Lea Bice borned 1938. 7