This Memory Keeps Us Warm

When Appalachian December bit through all of my quilts,
we lay shivering and cursing at the broken space heater,
And you said,
Close your eyes and see us at Coffee Call.

At that hazy cranny in Baton Rouge,
there was nothing between us but a plate of beignets
and steam rising from piles of powdered sugar,

white and pristine as banks of snow.