(as painted by Joanna Margaret Paul)

The clouds stack up like gorgeous quilts on the horizon.
The body is the ship that will take us to an honest place.

I separate out the three paintings: the brown cross-hatch
of a haystack, a sky smear crossed with a scarlet thread,

a green ripple of reeds. I spread them room by room
through the high house as if they might hold everything

together she's gone and done her crazy thing again.
I change my mind, I give them back to one another

above the bed. If I stretch my head back on the pillow
the whole psalm is there quoniam ego sum deus.

The sky is a radiant lake; the cloud, a beautiful swimmer.
I fear the terrible dancing shoes, the blinded boy.

You hid small treasures in the patchwork's tricky pattern.
Maybe you just wanted to be able to find your way back.