Helena
Minton
The city fathers dreamed these girls
the way they dreamed the town:
to scale, pale colors on a map, dolls
bending at looms by day, reading
the classics by night. Now I imagine them
as they rise to bells, break ice
in washing bowls, file at dawn
to the mills, their breath pouring before them.
All day they stand, each girl
at a different task: to guide raw
cotton through the spindle, blend dye
for yellow calico, count each bolt
for dish towels, sheets, their future husbands'
shirts, their own petticoats.
They hear machines roar the way the river
roars, breast wheels turning.
Do they whisper sonnets to themselves
or think of Cleopatra on the Nile,
clay banks where men lie sleeping?
Do they dream of being loved like that?
Each time a girl writes home, part of her
follows the letter across the border
to New Hampshire, growing damp
as it passes the sea, then safe,
unfolded by her mother's hands.
When she places her cheek on cold cotton
she sees the years ahead
like yards of undyed linen,
and yearns to watch a warehouse full
of dimity catch fire.
She wants to walk past the row
of beds, down to the river's most
seductive bend, to lie on the grass,
wet blades staining her nightgown,
feeling the hush, the sound
of nothing being made.
"From the Same Cloth" is from The
Canal Bed, by Helena Minton (Alice James Books). © Helena
Minton 1985.
Used by permission of the author and Alice James Books.
