Housewife’s Lament
Chris Vogt-Hennessy
I love the opera of the wash
on the line, the language of laundry:
I don’t have to speak for months.
There is the pulley system—its ease,
the flapping pants, swinging sleeves,
the going out wet, coming in dry.
If I could be that line
or even tied taut to a tree
I would not sway, I would stay:
a lace scarf draped on a high branch.
If I could be that rope and
control the coming and the going.
Today I drag my fingers through the water
of the wash basin, see concentric circles
like carp breathing below,
hear his echo in the small sounds
the water makes.