Libby Pease touches the framed poem that hangs on her kitchen wall. Libby could have memorized the verse, but prefers to be surprised by it.

“All the damned thing says is that when you’re old people expect you to be aligned a mite off center...” says the 400-year-old Algonquian spirit-priest who regularly joins her for morning tea, “...look at me. Go for it, Lib. Get naked, paint the cat; you’ve earned it,” says Sun-ripples-quiet-pool-to-call-of-loon.

Libby accepts having her own personal shaman as an article of faith, which faith she could not tell. Perhaps that of those pilgrims at the shrine of St. James she has seen in The National Geographic. The dead Indian smells rank, but not unpleasantly so—fresh earth clinging to over-wintering vegetables, plug-cut tobacco and molasses. He wears a loincloth and is well muscled, albeit stringy.

Libby reads a line further down, in mid-poem, “And learn to spit...”

This calligraphic treatment of the poem had come anonymously on her fiftieth birthday. Libby is celebrated as a quilter of rare gifts; people find both Libby and her quilts difficult. “Artistic,” is what they say. For her sixtieth birthday the quilters’ guild presented her with a framed copy of the poem. Libby’s quilts define her as she defines them, polychrome geometrical complexities being her specialty.

“...wear terrible shirts and grow more fat,” Libby reads.

“Libby, Libby, Libby,” says Sun-ripples-quiet-pool-to-call-of-loon. “Have you ever paused to reflect that some greeting card company pumps this crap out by the metric ton? Are we searching for deeper meanings today? Christ, I hate these biscotti.”

“You eat them.”

“Termites eat houses. Bet they’d rather have a cookie,” says Sun-ripples-quiet-pool-to-call-of-loon.

“And a red hat,” reads Libby Pease.