That Burgundy triangle is from a shirt
sold in a junk store on a side street in Baltimore
for a dime from the first American dollar.

The frayed green blob traveled from Kentucky
to Oklahoma territory, on the run from desperation
and typhoid, and loyalists willing to kill
in the name of Jesus.

It was after the move from Arkansas
and before the oil.
You could buy and sell the air in Oklahoma.
You could sell dust you didn’t own in Kansas.
You could hitch up a farm wagon,
load your Osage wife and her sewing machine
to follow the ruts west with your little girl walking
her song through prairie grass.

Platte, Bighorn, Snake.
Idaho, up a year-around creek
a valley over from the Nez Perce universe
near an old Shoshone fall camp,
the wagon fell apart and dropped you
where you could saddle the wind,
plant apple trees, and run cattle
into the edge of the timber.

Louisa shows the girl how to piece the scraps
of work shirts and tattered skirts,
coats and the edge of Grandma’s old blanket.
Her foot pumps the treadle
and the precious needle goes up and down.
It’s like the clouds: a face appears, a horse,
a chicken, and the hills, the hills of sage
and pine where elk bugle
and you can catch a mess of trout for dinner,
where the song of the mountain sings
peace in her ear, a peace she’ll need
when her father dies too soon
and an older brother loses the ranch
in a poker game. Mama starts cooking
in a greasy spoon in the valley
and they live in a shack out back.
She hugs the scraps tight
against a tormenting January.

It’s her dowry when she meets
the mill-working man at the dance;
and how she loved to dance
with him in his flared bell-bottoms
while the band pushed the Depression
and starvation into the indifferent night.

And that pearly pink’s from Aunt Mae
before she went off to San Francisco
looking for freedom and love
where you could get high
and float from shimmy to shake
and die a cautionary tale
about how far the clouds
can be trusted.

The midnight blue came
from Uncle Lee’s dress uniform
that hung in the closet
while he sank into the South Pacific.
He was your father’s favorite.
He was a story man.
He’d been to Italy and Spain
and New Orleans. On a frosty night
he would tell you how the wind tasted
in Barcelona or the look of moon water
in Naples. They never found him.

Mother’s hand-stitches hold
seams together, adding care
to what lives there.
Her sewing, like her cooking,
got you through, the art
was a hand pressed against need.

After a divorce I took
what wouldn’t be argued over,
this ratty quilt in the carload.
Thin by most standards,
I put it over me anyway
for two years of cold nights.
Then I boxed it up
and sent it to a cousin
with kids.