Another Word for Blanket

As euphemisms go, we are clothed
in something more than sleep. A blanket

owned by my grandmother protects
us from the chill of a winter night.

Children we have known named
their bedclothes, but this has been

too many places – cedar chests,
closets, spare room beds, and his

large double where my grandfather
wound his octogenarian body

while dying on hot summer nights.
His body wouldn’t warm itself.

Where are those days now when life
asked less of us and covered us 

as we dreamed about courage 
and the world lay down with us 

and sang us softly to sleep in wool.
Life never rests. It sighs and spins,

and pulls its edge to its side of night
and when we hold it up we see

a million tiny stars in the weave
and think we are wrapped in heaven.

Bruce Meyer

Bruce Meyer is author or editor of 64 books of poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, non-fiction, and literary journalism. He is the 2019 winner of the Anton Chekhov Prize for Flash Fiction, the Freefall Prize for Poetry, and was a finalist in the Tom Gallon Trust Fiction Prize and the Bath Short Story Prize. His most recent books are McLuhan's Canary (Guernica Editions) and Pressing Matters: The Story of Black Moss Press (Black Moss Press). Both will appear in October. His previous books include The First Taste: New and Selected Poems (Black Moss Press, 2018) and the short story collection, A Feast of Brief Hopes (Guernica Editions, 2018). A book of essays about his works will appear in 2020 along with a collection of flash fiction, Down in the Ground (both from Guernica Editions). He lives in Barrie, Ontario.

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