If I were to stitch together a quilt
for the last six years –
a quilt built
of quotes
that have helped me survive –
it would be a quilt
of many colors –
a quilt with a lilt –
a quilt of words
that poets have built.
There’d be Newcomer and Oliver,
Jesus, Beagle, and Pinney,
Osman and Adams and Vonnegut and Eddy,
Gandhi, Anne Frank, Goodall, and Tutu,
Mandela, MLK, Jr., Gorman, and Angelou.
Thích Nhất Hạnh’s words would be on it,
and Michelle Obama’s, too.
Mr. Rogers would be there,
and Winnie the Pooh,
and L’Engle, F.H. Burnett, Seuss, and Rick Steves,
and in the background there’d be
patterns of bright autumn leaves.
Autumn brings beauty
and autumn brings loss.
But “Anytime you learn, you gain,”
said the stellar Bob Ross.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell