Summer Patchwork

A refuge, equal need and deed
Unsure of how to sleep,
Its patchwork quilt of memory
Too many seasons keep.

Just half a canvas short, perhaps,
Of pressed pastoral dreams,:
A summer harvest bloom and ripe-
But deserts at its seams!

A country autumn, postmarked, then,
That splatters humble groves,
The waiting smiles of cinnamon
That crackle at late stoves.

But shores that whisper close to home,
And not two months away,
Can bake a winter heart in sand
Too slow for longest day.