a basket of clothes

my mother used
to gossip over the back fence
while hanging clothes,
wet clothes on the stiff line.
there would be a basket
at her feet,
a dog in the yard,
we were in the window,
some of us, faces
pressed against the cold
march glass.
but she would talk
to the neighbors in conspiratorial
whispers
about what the dirt
was in the neighborhood,
a husband gone astray,
a job lost.
a child sick with the measles,
a mother in law
who had over stayed her welcome.
i'd see her laughing,
standing in the blue green
grass of early
spring. the patches of dirt
where the dog ran
along the chain linked fence.
she was happy then.
out of the house, hanging
sheets and blue jeans,
shirts and dresses.
letting the wind do its thing.
tossing her thick black
hair about.
she would always be young
back then. I will always think
of her in that way.
strong and laughing,
a basket of clothes at her
feet.