Quilt

The speaker remembers lost dreams and laughter, then moves through hurt, a stone on a lake, a ship, and a logging truck. The poem closes with a request for quiet as a flower.

The speaker connects physical hurt with work and departure through brief recollections. Addressing someone let off as a lady brings power into these memories. The title Quilt offers a way to read the fragments together without fixing their events or people.

'Quilt' moves from 'Later losing dreams' and 'The good laughter vanished' to scattered images, 'Catch one stone on the lake' and 'One jumped ship, one logging truck', and closes 'Easy now, quiet, / as a flower'.

The poem pieces memories together like patches, and its ending softens the earlier hurt into a quiet instruction.