Sunday, January 31, 2010

Hello again

I don't know if anyone reads this anymore...it's been several months since I wrote anything...on here, and at all.

But I want that to change. I want to write, I need to write, and I have suffered because I haven't.

So, if you read this, leave a note if you can. I'd appreciate the encouragement, the comments, and anything else you'd like to say.

But what it comes down to is this...these pages are my thoughts, for better or worse, and a place for me to be me. Whether anyone sees or not.

Thanks. Heidi

Hanging on a Line

Warm winds puff,
lifts damp hair off my neck,
swirls my shirt around my body.

Sleeves cling to my sweaty arms
lifting sheets to a clothesline
secured with an orange peg.

If not for that breeze
the hot would oppress
with its humid breath.

I think of Australian women who have gone before me
those who hang laundry in other climes:
sticky tropical, dusty desert, verdant hills.

I picture time-worn faces,
cracked and defined by age and fickle weather
and circumstances and life.

I imagine gnarled hands that grip
lids of jars of harvested peaches and apricots,
and put clothes and sheets on lines in the sun.

I'm not an Australian woman;
But I see her in my neighbors, at the post office
and driving her beat-up ute to market.

As I ponder, black clouds break open,
the wind shifts like a compass needle
and hot rain thunders down on freshly laundered sheets.