Laundry Basket, In Winter

Laundry Basket, In Winter

Our horizon is never quite at our elbows.

                                                                                Solitude

                                                                                Henry David Thoreau

Consider the prospect of stepping down

from a tall, no taller, place without a railing,

beneath those pristine whites: I'd guess sheets, kites,

and there’s lightning, there’s prospects

rising up, or if not, oaks, or if not

pines, or if not, a child on the edge

of the angle pointing just so to the top

of where you are, or touching it even, where

skies like mothers, rely on prospects

of degrees being just so to create rain

and if rain then some thunder and if some

thunder than all her living life given to the wind

as kicks into that rain that came up with enough

mud to offer.  And all that’s white

above it will stay white above it, and herds

of children’s heads will spin when

they hit the pelvis bearing the basket, the hip

that swishes into and away, needing to lean

a freedom, one free weight on the solid spot

that all her life she’s had to stop and catch

her breath on, the prospect of an angle being just

slightly off and from that great height, step

and fall without falling.