Cotton

 

 

to look through

our long narrow window

is to see a rectangle of beyond

strangeness isolated:

your underwear drying, cotton,

my undershirt cotton, too,

skinny straps

back and front pinched to the line,

and only half of our double flowered sheet;

you love cotton, you said

uncharacteristically

rhapsodic one day:

the smell of cotton in the sun

how we see the wind—see the wind

pumping high ever back

back ever

a kid on a swing to come forward—

and how on the flowered sheet at midnight

cotton to cotton

on cotton we feel that sun

tangled in the wind

 

 

 

There are many things that make Grace want to get up in the morning: family and friends—sitting with them and talking—writing, singing classical choral music, cooking, that first morning cup of strong, sweet tea, working in the shade garden she made without knowing she would love it, a certain small town in northern California where she and her husband have an orchard—itʼs quite a list. Grace Hughes Chappell’s poems and other pieces of writing have been published in the Sunday SF Chronicle, the Richmond ReView, the Anderson Valley Advertiser and Short Fiction by Women, and online at Your Daily Poem, Haiku Journal, Eunoia, Every Day Poets, Tanka Journal, and Front Porch Review. She also writes the classical music program notes for the choral ensembles, Vox Dilecti and the San Francisco City Chorus—forty-two concerts and counting.