(for Toni Morrison)
on a needful day
your terribleness troubles
the house like thunderclaps
ripping a Delta sky.
You gather a bushel of autumn,
run faithfilled fingers over your threads.
Your needles of sunlight
worry a healing into history.
The ancient lady in your bones
memories out the quilts.
Her leafwork stitches spring
invisible at the seams.
You know winter starwars
have designs to freeze our flesh.
Your preternatural covers
blithely summer us into dawn…
