after a while we took in the clothes

that damp on the arms of hanging clothes on the line.

it is clean.

the breeze that lifts that damp and the sun that dries it.

a light-filled room if ever there was one.

these days my moments are like laundered shirts, damp and clean, hung up on a line.

work and chore.

rest on the line.

breezes of utility and beauty.

i would bury my face in the damp clinging until it dried and fluttered away.

i would string a line and pin up his growing tallness, nearly the height of me.

i would take a wooden clothespin to her kindness for her sister.

i would clip the dandelions handed to me from the neighbor’s yard.

i would lay down on the grass and watch each moment move and somehow take on the scent of a day.

when they pull these days out and over their heads to wear as young men and women, i hope they catch the scent of our time together.

i hope it is pleasing and clean and good to them.

because they have been that for me.

each moment.  each day.  each child.  each friend.

pleasing, good and clean.