LOVE ON THE FRIENDSHIP QUILT

Roll me in designer sheets, the song from the sexy movie says,
but now it's love on wedding sheets from cousins, sensible
     JC Penney sheets;
now it's love on the friendship quilt, with a block from
     Mother and Father at the center,
with blocks from Peter & Ilah, Smythe & Irma, the Elmer
     Riggles,
from Oscar & Velma, Herb & Martha, Mr. and Mrs. H. Wischmeyer;
on the friendship quilt it's love with the lights on, it's
     legal, it's love without whiskey, without perfume;
on the quilt it's a square dance with the same old partner
     and caller,
the same band's same few tunes in the same old Grange Hall;
it's for keeps on the quilt, for kids, it's for the country,
you dig deep down, on the quilt for the one good reason
you came here, kept coming back, will keep on coming.
 

MY BLINDNESS 

Once I woke up in the dark and thought I was blind.
There was no light at all.  There's always some light.

Blind, I was calm in that perfect dark. Friends would
come, and I'd tell them what they had had to do. It
would be all right.

I'd go back home, but dignified, and I'd know my way
perfectly in the house, even on the streets. I'd only been
gone a  few years.

I'd have them read me strange books, and they'd love my
strangeness, thinking This is what it was, we knew there
was something.  They'd loved it a little already.

There at home in my great dark I'd find a single purpose,
and begin.

But you know this: the light came.
 
Don't laugh at me. I live with so little blindness.
Such a long way I've come; so little blindness.