The Comforter

From the Rock Island Argus, February 22, 1915. By Anne P. Field.

Silent is the house. I sit
In the twilight and I knit.
At my ball of soft gray wool
Two gray kittens gently pull—
Pulling back my thoughts as well
From that distant, red-rimmed hell,
And hot tears the stitches blur
As I knit a comforter.

“Comforter” they call it—yet,
Such it is for my distress,
For it gives my restless hands
Blessed work. God understands
How we women yearn to be
Doing something ceaselessly—
Anything but just to wait
Idly for a clicking gate!

So I knit this long gray thing
Which some fearless lad will fling
Round him in the icy blast,
With the shrapnel whistling past;
“Comforter” it may be then,
Like a mother’s touch again,
And at last, not gray, but red,
Be a pillow for the dead!