Where I See Sue

This is where I see Sue:

There are times in the New Mexico desert
when the sun peers over the horizon,
and if you didn't know west from east,
you could never tell if the sun was rising or setting
because the golden light that colors the sparse landscape
is the same in the morning as it is in evening.

And in this golden light
Sue sits, I see,
gray, green, and pale,
in a wicker chair, on a wooden porch,
before an adobe cottage,
quilting by herself, but not alone.

And if you know Sue
and the maternal credibility she carries in her small, soft eyes,
she will pull, with gravitational authority,
the sun's golden light to her skin,
so she's no longer gray, green, and pale,
but a fiery bronze
like the bonfire of cosmetic scarves beside her.
Her slender fingers,
now like brazen needles,
patchworking a legacy from the ashen threads of those scarves,
quilted echoes that I can't wait to see.

This is not heaven, mind you,
for we are not promised a heaven immediate;
rather, I think,
this is sleep,
what the rabbis call "Sheol"--
peace and rest and silence,
a passing, like the New Mexican sun,
that is not night,
that is not morning,
but merely waiting.