by Janet Butler

I gathered summer in patterns
sky blues and warm greens stitched with a glint of gold
shadows laced in with a psso (pass slip stitch over)
for variation, a trace of depth.
Loop stitch, drop stitch, I tangled hot days
with soft nights, a moonlight motif to border
dusky sunsets.

But sharp winds pulled the slackness
of heated days
tore my work from dreaming fingers
tossed it through September gusts
unraveled it and dropped it
on brown waters rushing to winter.

After many years in central Italy, Janet Butler relocated to the Bay Area, California. She teaches TESL in San Francisco, and lives in Victorian Alameda with Fulmi, a beautiful Border Collie/Spaniel mix she rescued and brought back with her from Italy. Poems have recently appeared in Literary Mary, Plainsongs, Locust, Miller‘s Pond, The 13th Warrior, and Cutthroat, and are forthcoming in Forge, The Driftwood Review, and The Ibbetson Street Press. Shadowline, a full-length collection, was published by Gatto Publishing, Scotland, 2007.