REGARDING THE MIRACLE QUILTS OF GEE'S BEND

 REGARDING THE MIRACLE QUILTS OF GEE’S BEND

                          

      “Strike the rock and water will come out of it.”

                                                      Exodus 17: 6

Moses would love the quilts from Gee’s Bend.

The commemorative stamps would would startle and silence,

he might drop the stone. He’d look at the meteor shower

in Harriet Power’s quilt, and call it scripture.

Two surviving quilts proclaiming,

Nothing is missing, calling for a third

tablet of stone. He’d wonder what else he missed

lost in God’s clouds. Gee’s Bend, The Pettway Plantation.

A husband’s work clothes cut out and sewn

for God’s glory. Go down, Moses. Strike

the rock and water will come. All right,

Moses, and that water came. Grant you that.

But Egypt, now. Tears in the water.

Quilts for God come from God.

And that Middle Passage, Moses.

Call that Middle Passage what it is.

Quilts from Gee’s Bend testify, but

call Egypt by its real name.

Jim Bodeen

9 March 2026