I dreamed of my mother’s clothes:
opened an antique wardrobe—all her
clothes were there that I remember,
from crinolines to hose
with elegant seams
up the back; her housecoat,
her scarves that float
in perfume; I seem
to stand before a bank
of fabric memory,
my mother with me—
casual or swank
in gown, blouse, and slack—
as I rummage through
saying “Oh! I remember you,
and you!”—the fecund rack
giving me my mother
back again, and me a child
in her warm closet, clothes piled
around me like other
arms, the camphor scent of caring.
I find a green remnant
of the tweed coat she sent
me away to college in—faring
alone—long before she left herself,
an old lady in tidy gym
clothes, eyes rheumy, brain dim,
leaving spangled shawls on a back shelf.
In the dream I clutch the fiber
body of her, the outermost skin—
embrace it all, remember when
the clothes, and I, were filled by her.