“You Complete Me”

Thanks for putting up the handsewn curtains.

For your painting of a sunflower on a long

black board. The embroidered bowl of

fruit which hung for many years.

Flower gardens ringed with salvaged stone.

I appreciate the horse you drew because I

asked, when your hands no longer worked.

For mended shirts and origami birds.

For portraits of the children I was privileged

to see unfold in silence as you plied the brush;

for pencil sketches at a window in the night,

a cigarette you rested on the sill to get them

right.

For silkscreens, etchings of the poor match girl;

pinpoint landscapes on the backs of postage stamps,

for tightly knitted sweaters that were furnaces

against the winter.

For a charcoal of a sparrow dashed off in minutes

no amount of verbiage need apply.

For all the things I didn’t get to see, as well;

and things I was too blind to notice, and for

those I have forgotten, you have my gratitude.   

For a book you bound for me in felt and thread

I commend you to the alchemists. All I have to

do is look around. A sink you laid with bits of

colored glass I’ll find a way to save. Bottles

painted after drained of wine I set in alcoves

where the night won’t come for fear, embarrassment.

For borsch, a vase of flowers on a table cloth

I would not have placed there for myself.

For decorations on the cakes that would not keep.

Murals on refrigerators, fences, bricks. The sky?