My Take
DiVoran Lites
Hanging Out the Clothes 1950
Painting by DiVoran Lites from Go West
Under the clothesline.
Light layer of snow on the ground
Mother bends down and reaches up
Bends down and reaches up
She tells me this is how the cord
Got wrapped around my neck
Before I was born
She teaches me how to hang clothes on the line
I like the pinching clothespins best
But we still have some old wooden ones
From which you can make dolls with round faces
We only have so many clothespins
Use only one to clip like things together
Shirts, Towels, jeans, dresses, sock,
A lone sock requires its own clothespin
Oh-oh, here’s dad’s boxer shorts
Upside down or by the waist?
When it’s time to take them in
Everything has frozen
The boxers stand on the table
It’s the perfect time to start ironing
But day is done and shadows fall
When our son Matt left Florida for college he kept complaining that his jeans wouldn’t dry. I thought he was just angling for a dryer. Then we visited him and he was right… they didn’t get dry hanging out on the line!
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Beautiful poem.
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