1.

I open the closet door,

and my mother’s cloak

falls into my arms

as if it were herself thrusting

from the dark corners

of the unseen and unworn.

She thought life would dress her

in brilliance. She cried out–

A swing of black cape

with red silk lining . . .

I take the cloak and spread it on my lap,

spy the ragged stitches

where she tried– late, late– to mend,

and thread red silk through a needle’s eye,

my head bent to the work,

to join with her intent.

2.

This morning I watch a deer,

heavy-muscled, black-tailed,

confront our cat who raises

a tentative paw, sits back on her haunches.

The deer resumes

nibbling green tips–

then the cat springs.

Who’s more surprised?–

the cat when the deer leaps off to the woods,

or the dog, crouched far back,

who finds it now safe to bark?

What coat should I wear

for an epiphany about assumptions?

Perhaps the long black tailored one,

with a button-in lining?

But it’s for winter,

when the view is demented with rain,

the bushes stripped, the grass pale and

mouldering, for when drizzle stipples the glass

and I shiver, hands in pockets, in this coat

which is the best I can do to look civilised,

at funerals.

My mother said it was a beautiful coat.

So be it–beauty then:

it(s a must for when the balance of large and small,

habit and thought is trimmed. I need practice, that’s all,

in remembering.

Is it too soon to talk about

the community of coats?

Where do they come from?

Whom do they seek?

They line up,

winter and spring;

they’re how I tell time . . .

the yellow trench,

the Salvation Army Harris tweed worn while pregnant;

the parka from Corniche in Edinburgh

(my favourite) . . .

They come out at night, imprinted with scent.

They sniff hem and cuffs, babble in tongues:

made separate, seasonal,

long to be

One.

Coats fly out of the closet–

Gogol’s overcoat, Joseph’s dream-coat–

and I see that I haven’t considered metaphysics–

where do coats (imaginative or real) go?

I examine forensic evidence:

strands of hair on a collar,

chocolate in pockets,

stains on the lining where lovers

have lain in the snow . . .

Coats escape, find new identities at the

Sally Ann,

end up as rags, or thrown out

in that final move to the condo, return to dust,

dust of our dust, with a lost earring

caught on a thread of a hem.

These coats–messages to the world that say,

Take me as I am.