Lillian, Althea, Hattie, Zada

Praise all folds, crinkles, gathers,
pleats both sharp and rumpled,
corrugated cardboard’s columned smocking.

Praise sun-dried blue jeans and raisins’
ancient sweetness: old hymns’
complex thought clothed in easy rhymes.

Praise creases: English walnuts:
each human brain dreaming a future
while claiming the past. Now, praise

time’s thousand cranes: wrinkles
and grandmothers’ recycled names.