quilt

my mother made a corn field just for me
before we left. scattered blue & green husk. 
mice in the closet gossiped about you & i 
& whether or not we would last the winter. 
new york stood with crows on her shoulders. 
i never told you but sometimes 
i would watch television at midnight
with the cockroaches. i would tell them,
"my mother is making me a corn field."
we are not farmers but we are hemmed in by them.
horse hooves across asphalt. a broken down car
with a belly full of stray cats.
outside on the street the train went by
& carried with it dreams of the mountains.
i bought a needle from a street lamp 
& began to work. told myself, "i am going
to make her a cornfield." her being you
& your brickwall window. i gathered everything
i could find. coat hangers & twinkie wrappers &
even all my orphaned socks. a corn field is place
you go to feel abundant. or maybe
to believe there is still abundance. to chant "feast"
until the world is amber. kernels dry & ready.
sewing in seeds. here is where the roots 
will grab a hold of us. fix us here with the 
alley way jewels, the takeout box hermit crabs,
& the monsters. how i want to believe 
my mother made me a corn field. i wrap myself 
in a patch of the oldest sky i have.
the mice say, "it is almost over."
by "it" they mean me & you. not the winter.