I sewed a crazy quilt one fall
According to to the shapes I saw
Out the window watching the plow.
He laughed, Christmas, to see it, and mulched
Me in it like asparagus, tickled
The velvet creek bed was cut
From his dead mother's church hat.
Rye blue stitches bloomed
On khaki twill, and mustard stitches
On gray, and bright green fancy
French knots on dark brownñ
The khaki and grey and brown the still
Good sleeves from worn out shirts. Stone
Fences I built out of buttons.
Sometimes
Spring-times his fingers smiled,
Touching the clever exactness while
I rubbed his back when he came in,
Unable to straighten his back, the muscles
Stone inside him until I rubbed
Them smooth. He would have turned as much
As two acres on a good day
To get the crop in, dead straight furrows
the full field long, and none without
Its crop of stones frost-heaved
To the top to haul away. Keeping
Ahead of a hundred acres is a big
job, between fields and bush and the creek
where someday he wanted fruit trees.
He joked about fitting him, when his time came,
In the stone fence-- he'd wiggle my finger
Between the buttons to touch the spot.
But they won't set a man in a stone fence.
When the time came they lined him up
In the church yard with all the rest.
That got me going. It wasn't just him,
When he was gone they were all gone
And me on my own. I was afraid
It might drive me crazy, and it's hard to keep track
Around strangers. So what I do if I start
To wonder, I take the quilt to the window
And finger my place in the cloth fields,
Sight along the stone fence
And shrug my glasses down. That shakes
Out the clover-leafs and slides
The suburbs off, to bare that naked
Swell of plowed ground still there
Lying still along the creek bed.