Undumpsterable

The straight strong letters of your ancestors’ name
stitched beneath the tag–
you alone
intended to keep your coat
long enough to lose it.

You sewed your own ideas
and stocked the pockets with patches and thread,
mending nips and cracks in the elbows
without throwing the whole theory away,
without flinging your fingers into the sleeves
of a new see-through designer belief.

My solid girl,
you saw eleven plastic knives bow down
and twelve tweeting little stars
fall with their fads and magazines prostrate
before your coat of faded colors,

and during the blizzard you stood buttoned,
you stood rooted, stitched of gravity,
you stood stitched of truth and buttons–
you gravitied, rooted of wool.