Who's Piecing It Together

Sometimes I wake up to the fact

that the white page of winter

yellows into spring. Pollen

and butterfly wings.

That my windshield is not a net.

That clarity is an ending.

And I long for the indigo hour

between dusk and dark

when the light falls just so

that the grass flips its violets

into fresh pink erasers

and I can begin again.

I know it's an illusion,

but my sewing machine's

an orange-on-beige

vestige of the seventies,

and when I sew, my heart

beats a blue strobe

on black denim. Tonight,

the disco vanishes

in a lint cloud of plaid

and purple rows of hats appear

where button-downs once stood.

This is my magical power.

Tomorrow, the lumberjack reds.

The bewildered khakis.

Blue jeans in all manner of distress.

We'll find a use for you yet.

The beleaguered, the eschewed.

I accept the mustard-stained regret.

Yes, even your coral atrocities.

The challenge is the pleasure

but corduroy in any shade disarms me.

Moth gray. Black lace. Lavender suits.

Faux suede in deep forest green.

I could stumble through that glade for weeks

and come out waving a pair of shorts.

It's funny, how proudly

my hands bear the graphite

smudge of the cartographer,

the one in charge

who's piecing it together,

and how often my eyes

search the stitch line,

the perpetual stitch line,

for a bold red star

that would say You Are Here.