a poem just for me

Patchwork

These are her materials:
a husband with a habit of locking doors,
two children who hold secret parties.
A fox, a snake, stranger things;
they live in the places she only gets to
when the right doors are opened at the right time.
Some moments when the world is painted blue;
by day, it's robin's egg, brilliant and peaceful,
and by night it's navy of the thirteenth hour, heavy, lonely.
The hours have no bearing on their hue.
Common words that hold uncommon mystery,
scrapes that will be permanent but forgotten,
moments that bleed and hold their own, the clinking of glasses,
ordinary dinners, cleaning, fixing, thinking,
becoming the eye of a dissipating storm.
These are her materials,
these irregular and jagged shapes
with their soft snares,
but oh how deft and patient she is with them.
It's not the severe perfection of the Amish style,
or the plain functionality of the Mennonite,
but it will do,
this nice covering, this warm collection
of misshapen squares that each one warms your body
with a riotous, discordant
beautiful story.

--David Cowan


(I love it so much.)