My Mother's Laundry

My mother loved her laundry,
It made her so proud
To see it hanging on a sun burnished
Summer day in Baltimore.
She’d set the sheets aflutter: billowing mains’ls
Deftly pinned to cotton cords strung like rigging
From one tall T shaped spar to another,
The towels and pillowcases and bleached white
Diapers like pennants and banners
Snap-cracking if the wind was up.
Heaven help the child who wandered,
Blind man’s bluff,
Across bee kissed clover and tasseling crab grass,
Through deliriously clean laundry
And stopped with a popsicle stained face
To smell the sunshine, seeping into Mom’s laundry.
And at dusk, the sails came down, the banners were furled
Into a wicker basket,
And some were spread on sleepy children’s beds
To shed sunlight into our dreams.