There’s a loveliness in reaching up amidst blushing colors,
sweet scented sheets whipping strongly southwest,
pinning together cloth flower bouquets;
planting instant blowing gardens
in exhilarated spring gales.

I still love the feel of my long hair blowing tangle-wild
on bright warm windy mountain afternoons,
lugging cumbersome baskets to
fasten freshly washed clothes
on the seventy-one foot line
strung pine to pine behind the house;

squinting up, dodging the brilliant sun,
straw hat’s drawstring tugging at my neck,
cool dampness flapping in my flushed face.

There’s an élan in heavy winter quilts jerking out of my hands,
flying straight out, too high to touch, as though
yearning to reach the streaming clouds.

And a reminiscence in meeting that happy child again,
forty years back, me, hanging clothes with my mother;
a sunny memory fastening us both
together forever.