*

*

In a Louisiana prison,

some inmates sew quilts.

Shelves overflow with stacks of fabric,

sorted into categories:

children’s, sixties, flowers.

And arranged by colors.

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Sharp tools like rotary cutters and scissors

are signed out and tracked.

If a man breaks a rule, he’s barred.

The finished “sandwich”

with pieced top, batting and back

goes to the long arm machine

to be stitched together.

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Completed quilts go to foster kids.

Letters of thanks from the parents and kids

are wept over and stapled to a huge board.

One man sits up designing quilts on graph paper

when he can’t sleep.

Another chooses only fabric with butterflies,

because his mother liked them.

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The supervisor was incarcerated at age twenty.

He’s now sixty-four. He teaches and offers praise

and encouragement.

One quilter says he gets so absorbed in his project

that he forgets where he is.

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It’s to weep over, these inmates finding meaning

in creative work that produces something beautiful,

something useful, for someone young and needy,

like they were, once, years ago.