"Grandma's Wash Day"
Marsha Markman
Grandma’s Wash Day
Grandma scrubs sheets on a washboard
feeds them through a hand-cranked wringer
hangs them from wooden pins
on a twisted wire line.
She cranks the rusted pulley ‘till
the sheets stretch across the alley
from a window in her Brooklyn flat
to Mrs. Catano’s brick tenement.
I watch them flutter
like a ship’s canvas
sails flapping on a breeze
across the Sound.
When the wash is dry
Grandma pulls the line back home
slips the pins in her apron pocket
piles the laundry on her bed for folding.
I nuzzle into the sheets
breathe the aroma of salt air
the scent of wildflowers that
poke through the dunes
that drift across the boardwalk
through Brighton Beach and
long-ago years
on Grandma’s wash day.
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