Today is Ground Hog Day
Saturday, February 2nd, 2019I am visiting my sister-in-law in Providence, Rhode Island, where the “Arctic Chill” is in full force! But the sun is shining and the wind is not whistling, so I am not complaining. It’s Groundhog Day, so maybe we will see Spring soon!
Here is a poem I wrote while looking out the kitchen window at the empty clothesline in the backyard:
Ode to a Lonely Clothesline
A naked clothesline shivers in the February freeze,
Barely moving, like a silent breeze.
Does anyone hang wash outside on a wintry day,
or are dryers busy rumbling and tumbling away?
Wet wash in winter often hung* on our basement line—
no automatic dryer to ease Mom’s daily whine
of clothes piled high on the cold, gray floor;
waiting their turn, there was always more!
Endless mounds of not-so-dirty clothes—
A nod to “cleanliness is next to Godliness,” I suppose.
*My sisters and I often helped Mom hang clothes ( outside)on the clothesline in winter. We brought them in frozen and let them “melt” indoors. I write about this in my 2018 book, For the Love of Clotheslines, which is available on Amazon.