Borrowed Coats

Borrowed Coats

The night was clear
as Mama's crystal cake plate
and stinging cold

Rabbits burrowed in
hollow logs
squirrels curled their
bushy tails into muffs

Toodle Barnes and I
stood at the window
of our sharecrop house
longing to go outside
and consult the moon

But our coats were much
too thin
we dared not go
though destiny called us
from the glittering sky

My younger brothers had no belief
in a magic moonthey played dominoes by the fire
and never saw us sneak out
in their sheep-lined coats

where the moon waited
to show us its boy faces
and let us choose from them:
Toodle wavered between three faces
I looked hard and made one
irrevocable choice

Notes

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McDaniel, Wilma. (2001) Borrowed Coats. Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, New York.
Courtesy University of California, Merced Library. Copyright owned by the Regents of the University of California.