Knots and Earworms

I was doing some ancestral research a few years ago. For several

days, I concentrated on my great-great-grandmother, Mary. Not

only was I searching through census lists, trying to locate her mother,

sister and brother, who were all separated after her father died in the

Civil War, but I was empathizing with her feelings on losing a father,

as well as, later in life, a young son.

Over the course of the days while I was doing this research, a song,

out of nowhere, kept playing over and over again in my head. Finally,

it was driving me nutty and I had to look it up. It was a slow version

of Listen to the Mockingbird, a song very popular during the Civil

War, with sad lyrics about a singer, dreaming of his sweetheart, dead

and buried, and a mockingbird singing over her grave. I certainly

hadn't heard this song anywhere and thought it a strange earworm.

It suddenly came to mind, that it must have a connection to Mary,

who I had been thinking about so intently.

After telling this to my sister this weekend, I was inspired to write

this poem.

Maternal Knots


My foremothers, apron to apron,
bind generations
with deer hide knots and Irish muslin.

Their spirits beam ancestral pride,
within my household walls
did hide, as newborns cried;

lulled to sleep with fiddle tunes
of mockingbird,
native chant and Celtic runes.

Weave 'round their offspring
gentle ties, connecting each
with tribal string;

maternal knots join with the earth,
will reason for each new one's birth.


Willow, 2009