If I sit on The Portico
I can’t see My Laundry Line
but I can see a neighbour’s
with The Ocean in behind
the length of line is parallel
The Hanging Fabrics Flicker
They Catch My Eye
like a fire
as Wind Blows Through Them Quicker
I am Mrs Dr W Hunter Blair
I sit on My Deck
& write poetry
I dress for The Weather
& whatever else is going on
I listen to The Sheets & Towels
fluttering on the line
I listen to The Birds
The Waves
& whatever else is going on
I listen
I write
for Joanna Gilman Hyde
I am dressed for The Sun
in Floppy Sun Hat
& Long Mexican House Dress
with Sunscreen on My Arms
45 years or more
away from when My Mother
dressed Me
in My Sun Pants & nothing else
& sent Me outside
away from Harm
on Our Sunny Nova Scotia Island
Here I sit in My Black Slip
of a Nightgown
waiting for The World to End
waiting for All Our Global Assets
to fall apart
to be rearranged
to be supported
by All The Silver & Gold
We can possibly carry
10:48am
I look at the water dazzle
& think of what to write
I’ve been with Hunter
thirteen years
& not without a fight
–
11:00am
I want to climb into bed
like A Child
& hold onto My Daddy’s Head
from here to infinity
wild
OK ‘cuz now He’s dead
–
11:22am
A Butterfly has inspected
Me
I don’t know where She’ll
Land
perhaps on Someone Else’s
Lips
or in a Friendship’s
Hand
My Son just confirmed, echoed
I have a booming voice
“like no other”
Am I Gifted
or just loud in restaurants?
Do I Make Sense?
I am heard
through My Writing —
but when will I yell out
authoritatively
to Our World
for Our World
to Guide?
to Scold?
I suddenly feel older
by more than the fifteen years
since I dolefully reclined
in a wicker chaise longue
on the screened-in porch
built by My First Husband
— a porch sought for My Sanity —
yet used so briefly
I wonder how I remember it at all
–
This Deck I’m on now
in My Maturity
is an outpost for reverence
of All My Surroundings
occupied daily in good weather
and always in Good Mind:
I am healed now
— I long for nothing —
and have grown up
into The Full Observer
I was as The Child
