Dream Meeting

On the way to meet her
I poled upstream for hours
through the dark, arrived
at dawn, and entered a log house
where an old woman, sleeping
on a narrow bench of pelts,
rose up on one elbow.

Gray hair spilling down
her bones, she stared at me.
Meet your grandmother,
a voice instructed, and I did,
this woman of the Cherokee,
her eyes demanding mine,
as I stood silent on the dirt,
lost in crickets and the sound
of the stream that carries me.

**

The Animal Pit

When her dog died last winter,
she laid his body on the back seat
and drove to the town dump
following the vet’s directions
to the animal pit.

Standing near the edge
she swung her dog round
to the four directions,
wished him safe journey
and let go.

The dog flew into the wind,
landed on the heap of others
lying in the snow—his chin
tilted up, his right forepaw
angled toward the sky,
and his nose pointing home.

**

The Quilt of the Sky

The quilt of the sky
flows over her.
She pieces the clouds together—
cumulus, stratus, nimbus, cirrus
testing the names on her tongue,
the shapes on her pricked fingertips.

She has been a long time
searching for the right ones,
weathered and properly dyed.

Soon it will be done—
only a few from over the hills
remain in her basket.

They will fit at top,
and then the border of blue
cut from all the mornings
she has acknowledged.

The quilt will cover her
in the coming cold
which creeps like a glacier
toward her heart.

Just one more piece now—
the one for the corner, stained
with her blood.