Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
Dawn Potter: Play Clothes
The old days of the old clothes—those summers
when we grew out of pants before they wore out,
barely noticing what was draped over our bodies
until our mother realized that the tight shorts
had morphed into booty shorts and they vanished
from the drawer. How many summers
did that red and white sundress last?
It was my mother’s before it was mine,
sewed from a feedsack in 1945
and tough as pig iron. Slipped over
underpants and nothing else, on a sultry
morning in August, bare feet
in dew grass, sneaking Fanta at 8 a.m.
out of sight of the disapprovers, my sister
in cutoffs scratching a tunnel among rosebushes,
the two of us acting out cowboys on a rotting wagon,
founding a nation of hay bales. And still
my thoughts are streaked with grass stains
and mud puddles and the prickers of blackberries
and poison ivy, acres of it, and cow shit, and at night
the wistful scent of Lucky Strikes and Miller
High Life floats across the firefly hill, among
the murmured conversations of the uncles,
reek of old dog, porkchop grease wiped
on a cherry-stained shirt—the indifferent
beauty of dirt, everything worn out, almost gone: gone.
Copyright 2023 Dawn Potter
Dawn Potter is the creative director of the Frost Place Studio Sessions as well as the director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, both associated with Robert Frost’s home in Franconia, New Hampshire. Her many books include Accidental Hymn (Deerbrook Editions, 2022).
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I love beautifully gritty summer ode 🤎
LikeLike
Love this poem. Especially the turn from almost hone to gone….
LikeLike
Wonderful poem. I live the turn in the last line from almost gone to gone. Pierces me.
LikeLike
Yes, Dawn’s turns of speech are very subtle, aren’t they?
>
LikeLike
“…the indifferent beauty of dirt…” sums up a lot of things for me. This is another marvelous poem, one we are so grateful for seeing. Thank you.
LikeLike
Thanks, Warren.
>
LikeLike
Ah, this conjured so many memories. Beautiful.
LikeLike
Yes it is…
>
LikeLike
“The indifferent beauty of dirt….” Yes!
LikeLike
I love that phrase!
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Such exquisite descriptions and images: it could ‘see’ it all so well — like a short documentary about summer in a very particular neighborhood. I loved sneaking a Fanta at 8am! All those smells and colors.
LikeLike
I agree, Laure-Anne. The poem evokes so many feelings for a time long gone.
>
LikeLike
I remember well the admonishment from my mother about changing into play clothes after school. It was practically a sin to “play” in school clothes.
LikeLike
Our parents and grandparents were more thrifty and careful about things than we are…
>
LikeLike