A Clothesline of Words
I weave order out of the daily chaos by listening to Bach
and by hanging out the laundry in rainbow color schemes,
alternating patterns with plain fabric.
Like air, I cannot keep my thoughts
from touching everything I meet,
harvesting syllables like loose dandelion seeds.
These words become clothing the morning wears—
vigilant, warm, protective. Hopeful as honeybees.
I hang this poem up in the sky inside me,
metered like Bach but in rainbow colors
amidst my plain and imperfect patterns,
wringing trouble out of the wind.
Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Jennifer Pratt-Walter is an Alumna of Clark College, AAS, 1981 and ADN, 1983. Jennifer is a freelance musician, poet and photographer. She has had work published in a number of sources, and has just completed her first full-length collection, 52 Sundays. Jennifer has a husband whom she met at Clark College and three grown children, of which two are also Clark College graduates. She revels in the beauty of ordinary things.
