Who recalls the darkness
of your other life,
sewn shut
around feed grain,
or remembers your release
to join your sisters,
the dishcloths, now
ampleness and holes?
Not the absent hands
which tied you
behind the back,
already forgetting.
How thoughtlessly
they used you,
old stove-gloves,
soft baskets
for tomatoes, and yet
how wonderfully
such being
left out
shows your inclusion!
Oh tough dresses
without closets,
lovely petticoats that flashed
beneath the frayed
hemlines of barncoats
all over Vermont.
-Wesley McNair