Fabric

by Alicia Vandevorst

There, the shimmery, the matte cotton, the frayed, the tufted,
the mass of fabric scraps that can’t be thrown away, and my mother
who fingers fabrics sideways, not turning till she wants a length;
she keeps her scraps, the color field, the pool of individuals 
apart, tousled to rouse her sense of depth, the potency 
the field reflects: this with this with this and that or that.

Last night I dreamed a pile of fabric scraps, a fabulous pink
metallic wing, a ginger wool, greens of undersides, 
and flashes of tips of more, a mound a woman formed, to save
and give away to me the chance to bring the scraps together;
and here I see my lists as colors: the Sanskrit lover, gardener,
mother, poet, the stomps I dance, the tendency to sit
and watch a while, translator without fluency...

or see the field of gorgeous skins: the russet, the burnt umber,
the pale of pith, the faintest yellow as the cast of a set sun,
the shiny loamy ones, the bone, the unglazed porcelain,
the scaly green, the silver wet, the white fur, the roan...
as if pieced together to form a quilt whose seams reveal
binding life, a whole that shifts together, flows and rests.