Carol Hamilton

At the Clothesline

We women join in constellation,
our archetypal memories stirred
by the wind's capture in puffed
backs of shirts, white and smelling
of soap. Clothespins peg me
to ancient rites boiling up
in my blood, magic potions
combined for love. From pre-war
days on a Kansas City hill
my mother-in-law whispers to me
down her wiped clean wires
and my mother bends to her basket
on a prairie farm, hating it.
My lines are draped with branches
of an overgrown elm. The suggestion
was made that the rough metal poles
might be removed. But I keep
the four wires and their pinions,
visit them with damp, fresh offerings,
and they, like a clever medium at
a seance, arouse the sleeping.