Poetry, Clotheslines and Rain

Here's a great collection of poems about clothing: from the Academy of American Poets.

It's a good thing to find today, as I'm trying to find online the manufacturer of my new clothesline, because I need a replacement pole, because it's not working yet. This is a sad tale. Franslei mounted the unit out of which 5 lines pull (wacky syntax) on the wall of the garage. That worked. But the bracket which receives the bar to which the 5 lines are attached at the other end (better syntax) doesn't mount properly to the fence opposite the wall. Too low, too crooked. So, instead of hanging laundry in bliss last weekend, I cried. Disappointment is rampant as we move into this new terrific house. We'll get there, it's true.

So, the AAP's collection of poems is mostly about clothes. Lots of shoes. But I need a poem about clotheslines, so here is one of my favorites, by Jorie Graham, from a Vassar website, 'Words in Flight' -- an English Thesis by Shari Margolin.

"The Geese"by Jorie Graham

Today as I hang out the wash I see them again, a code
as urgent as elegant,
tapering with goals.
For days they have been crossing. We live beneath these
geese

as if beneath the passage of time, or a most perfect heading.
Sometimes I fear their relevance.
Closest at hand,
between the lines,

the spiders imitate the paths the geese won't stray from,
imitate them endlessly to no avail:
things will not remain connected,
will not heal,

and the world thickens with texture instead of history,
texture instead of place.
Yet the small fear of the spiders
binds and binds

the pins to the lines, the lines to the eaves, to the pincushion bush,
as if, at any time, things could fall further apart
and nothing could help them
recover their meaning. And if these spiders had their way,

chainlink over the visible world,
would we be in or out? I turn to go back in.
There is a feeling the body gives the mind
of having missed something, a bedrock poverty, like falling

without the sense that you are passing through one world,
that you could reach another
anytime. Instead the real
is crossing you,

your body an arrival
you know is false but can't outrun. And somewhere in between
these geese forever entering and
these spiders turning back,
this astonishing delay, the everyday, takes place.

(She ends her sentences with prepositions sometimes. Poets are allowed.) (Her poem doesn't have a moon in it, but this beautiful photo calms me.)