A King Arthur Home

An age-spotted hand pulls back faded flour sack curtains

in the window of an old run-down farmhouse

A woman gray hair combed neatly into a bun

peers across the side fence that belched

most of its pickets during the last fierce storm

She looks at the knotted wire clothesline

Remembers when it was filled with

little slips covered in miniature pansies

and the King Arthur logo

flapping in the springtime breeze

She preferred King Arthur to Gold Medal

for the flour sacks washed up softer

felt nicer against the skin

Her generation learned to make over

make do or do without

Her little girl once got excited

to pick the designs on new bags of flour

Then happily rode the pedal

on the treadle sewing machine

while mother stitched a new pinafore

The woman slowly moves into the kitchen

Washes up remnants of a lonely meal

Dries one cup and one plate

with a neatly hemmed flour sack towel

Remembers how she always kept

her girl’s hair in tight pigtails

tied with store-bought ribbons

Some things small things

didn’t have to be made by hand

Remembers the day her girl removed the braids

combed her hair to fall loosely about her shoulders

and stepped smartly through the door

in search of her own life

So many years ago

She does now as she did then

and cries softly into her flour sack apron

(First published in The Red River Review)