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POEM
Recycle

Alvin G. Ens

Mother reaches into the box again
and proffers another baby blanket,
soft flannelette
with hours of love
crocheted around the border,
good shower gifts for family and beyond.
“These are the last I can sell for five dollars
with the cost of flannelette rising again,”
she says wistfully.
My wife buys several.
There follow T-shirts of recycled material,
scraps of material fashioned into doll blankets
and more.
Hands still busy after eighty-five years.
She, who learned reduce, reuse, recycle
in subsistence prairie farming
    long before ecological correctness,
conserves, reuses, creates and recreates.
Herself recycled from schoolgirl
to farmer’s wife to merchant to retiree.
She has shaped and reshaped love
to four generations.
Hands slower now and more deliberate.
Mother, it’s OK
to reduce your locus of activity,
to recycle to other hands,
to rest from labour,
to reuse your memories,
reshaped into blankets of love and prayer
covering your family and beyond,
as God, the great Recycler,
    continues to recreate you.

Alvin G. Ens lives in Abbotsford, B.C.

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Last modified January 9, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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