I am wrapped in my childhood comforter,
and it is enough around me to keep off cold through cracks a century coming, a century like chimes pealing, peeling off, years falling away like leaves dropped and it’s still clingy autumn here:

but I’m building walls of books, too,
because in my bed they help to keep of the cold and for all its warmth Dixie sure has biting nights that even three years north of the Mason-Dixon have not yet taught me to love, and the books are enough, enough enough:

but I’m wooling my mind with words,
tangled like click, click, click I never learned to knit properly so I really should put these needles aside and just crochet, but it’s diverting to knot phrases in unfamiliar ways and everything here is so familiar that it’s a comfort, really, so I need these words to unwind me:

but walking these roads I feel at home,
in place, in peace, embraced, and sure as ever that my autumns will drop on red clay like it doesn’t matter how fertile the soil is I’ll grow here, dammit, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be no other words I’d rather weave no, no nothing else I’d rather read no, no no way else I’d rather sleep:

but these are not my thoughts,
my thoughts are very different.