Hands busily stitch patterns in and out,
five sets on each side of a long board.
I, with the youngest hands, watch and listen
with intent to the elder women of my family.

Janie now has her last child; no boys to carry
the family line on to the next generation.
Tom, like his father's father before him,
has survived his first year of the Marines.
Ginny has divorced again, the third time,
with the fourth child for Aunt Gladys to raise.

Their hands, experienced in fine stitchery,
never skip a line, lightly sketched upon satin.
Their eyes rarely know what their hands do.
Like instincts of childbirthing, these women know
when to say this square has had all its stitches,
and then move on the next one.

Their lives are like that, moving in and out,
slowly building one link to another,
holding their children to them with fine thread.