1)
My life, tied up
in the middle of house chores,
loses itself in hanging clothes
on the line between
the tulip poplar and red maple.
This is a job I make meticulous
with unnecessary arranging
and sorting by color and shape.
Suddenly, I sense someone
behind me.
“That’s alright,” she says,
“don’t stop hanging.”
I hear her camera clicking.
“I’m doing a photo essay
on bed linens and dish rags.
It’s one of the best-selling subjects
at my gallery.”
An artist, it seems, from Pasadena
has accidentally
made her way to my dead-end
road to ask for directions
to the covered bridge.

I keep on hanging
every item from my basket;
by then she’s discovered
the chickens – framing
the hens in the falling down
barn yard while trying to avoid
the roosters.

“I grew up on a farm,” she says,
“but where I live now,
there are laws against clothes lines
and domesticated fowl.”
“Wow!” is all I can say.
“You’re in the middle of nowhere,”
she says. “How did you find this place?”
“Every nowhere is somewhere,” I say
and notice her foot prints in places
she’ll later regret.
“I’ll send you some prints,”
she says, getting into her car.

2)
Four a.m.
summer solstice
the cat wants out
the rooster crows
and I suddenly remember
the clothes
hanging on the line
………….. a ghostly image
of flapping sheets
on someone’s upscale
California wall.

–Jim Lally,
Stick Tight Man
Accents Publishing