Moonlight tells
Moonlight tells,
so we shut our eyes
tight, tight no white,
to show the crunching
closer feet where we hid.
Still
not shaking.
Knowing if we did
the leaves might rattle
and they might look down.
They're leaving!
They're leaving,
not seeing us in this
hole covered with limbs
surrounded with bushes.
Still we wait, to be sure,
not coming out
until we hear the wagon
and Ole Gil.
He pulls away the limbs
and everyone is out fast,
into the wagon, and under
the heavy dirty canvas.
Hidden,
in the wagon moving North.
I grabbed the fear that made me
want to scream and crammed it
deep into my apron pocket.
Stiff and small I made myself,
and I fell asleep there,
and woke to the shouts
of Freedom as we reached the North.
I held tight the quilt
with it's handstiched secrets,
sewn cabins and orchards
beneath a shiny Northern Star.
And proudly I gave Gil
my grandmother's quilt
as he returned without rest
searching for family in the South.
Family
he found and approached
would invite a cousin to supper
and be given a quilt
and whispers in the dark.
Brave ones,
would come and follow the quilt
to places where railroaders waited
to send them station to station
Northward to freedom's cry.
Fear,
would enslave some,
and the quilt would be left,
just wash hung out to dry,
for Gil and slaves running North
© 2012 Tamera Dobbins