Jim

Laundress by Gayle LaVallee

LAUNDRESS

    early June. The hotel’s tableclothes
        curled in my basket, wet
            ready for hanging
                my joy among the strong white lines
    pinned to the promises of season, green grass,
            breeze just recently shorn of daffodils.
        I am tall, romantic,
            as I stretch them out, tight checks and polka dots,
            in fresh sea
                sun.

    in August.  Rows and rows and six lines deep
        colored guest sheets
        scallop
            across the bowed-down ropes.
    I pin and unpin,
        pin again, take down,
        reach and lift and gather in
        sultry air, the sweating
            sun-soaked
                    days.

    October.  The last white curtains sail
        the flapping line
            in crisp attention.
                the sea wind turns
    the empty pegs
            tuning its   goodbye song
        to lace and valance and laundress
        standing in romance
            folding the season
                down.

Gayle LaVallee

Monhegan Cached by Gus Bombard

MONHEGAN CACHED

The island is always there, imprinted,
a fluid, moving backdrop for the planned
and daily gestures enacted before it.

Miles from the coast, Port Clyde,
the Elizabeth Ann, and the ever-changing sea,
I read and reread poems written by acolytes
who are there in its strong embrace.
Their literate, graphic pictures catch in my throat
with recognition as the words
fuse together in focused images–

And–I turn to the pictures themselves:
they repeat the loving descriptions that I
not only remember, but wrote about.
My legal pad, fountain pen, and I,
tied to the shore, immerse ourselves
into our communal, esoteric passion.
We write about distinct well-worn shadows.

Gus Bombard

September 5, by Marjorie Mir

September 5th

Summer ebbs out.
We look for warmth where we can find it,
cat and companion
in tide-pools of sun,
until chill air stirs us, moves us on,
itinerants,
following a season’s shoreline,
light’s retreating tide
as far as time allows.

Marjorie Mir

September by Jan Bailey

And now the slow slide into autumn:
the thinning crickets, the monarchs
moving weightless among us like orange
angels, the tight-lipped rose hips;
the brown curl of aspen leaf, the bikes
tossed willy-nilly on the schoolhouse
lawn. Even the shadows slide, like blue
cloaks about the apple trees. Now
the mornings deepen; the meadow glints
of scraggle weed and thorn and a
russet splatter of barberry sweeps in
among the spruce. September, like
the hem of a dress moving easy
through the grass, and we running
alongside, tune our engines, whip-
whine our saws, rattle the storm
windows from the cellar, backhoe
our wells, wrap our buoys in their
day-glow dresses. We, running
alongside, bent on keeping pace,
our eyes focused on the road ahead,
our ears thrumming.

Jan Bailey

Reprinted from Paper Clothes, Emrys Press, 1995.