Patchwork

I.

I read slowly, emphasizing every morsel of personification and alliteration.

Leaving questions of hope and sorrow to hang heavily in the air.

No one uttered a sound.

We compared Raphael and Giotto,

Revolutionary masters of light and dark. Trailblazers.

We pushed pins into the timeline of the human story,

marking Confucius, Caesar Augustus, and Jesus Christ.

Just neighbors in the grand scheme of things.

We chiseled into dusty geodes and found hidden secrets.

There is such a lot of world to see.

II.

My son stood in the kitchen eating salami and cheese, apple slices in hand.

He watched me standing in the studio,

the 1960's pass through window connecting us.

I ate a pastrami sandwich, with mustard and pickles,

remembering the lunches of Pasadena Sandwich Company,

and a life that once was mine. Los Angeles.

Sunsets along the PCH. Falling in love. 

Every single possibility ahead.

III.

"Mom, are you happiest when creating?"

His eyes far away. That signature look.

I can show you the picture, how he,

brand new to this earth gazed silently

at the institutional lights of the hospital nursery. 

Born immediately into a world of his own.

And I couldn't answer before he said, "I get that from both my parents."

IV.

Fragments of charred, forgotten canvas, once the keeper of a dream,

in my hand, next to strips of a quilt, whose story I do not know.

Yellowed pages of a dictionary. Alphabetical and wise.

The remains of brightly colored fabric,

from when inspiration screamed, we must be completely alive!

We must be completely alive!

Fallen bark from the birches of my beloved Northern waters.

Everything found and this wild collected pressed into the joint compound,

acting as glue to this perpetually unfinished life.

Of all the possibilities, this patchwork is mine.