Spin Cylce

Here is a poem I wrote in December in the comments section of Mary Lee Hahn's website, Poetrepository. I didn't want to lose it so, here it is.


 Photo by Steve Peterson

Spin Cycle

The graveyard is full of them,
the forgotten ones who plowed the earth
milked the cows and fed the chickens,
washed the clothes and hung them on the line
then baked lemon bars for
church basement funerals.
Dreams cleared the land. Hope built fences.
Now ash trees sprout in the pasture. And
fences fall under the weight of my neglect.
A washing machine rusts quietly in the tall grass,
returning bits of itself to the earth,
called home to its simplest beauty.


-- Steve Peterson