Louisiana Line
By
Betty Adcock
The wooden scent of wagons,
the sweat of animals—these places
keep everything—breath of the cotton gin,
black damp floors of the icehouse.
Shadows the color of a mirror’s back
break across faces. The luck
is always bad. This light is brittle,
old pale hair kept in a letter.
The wheeze of porch swings and lopped gates
seeps from new mortar.
Wind from an axe that struck wood
a hundred years ago
lifts the thin flags of the town.
the sweat of animals—these places
keep everything—breath of the cotton gin,
black damp floors of the icehouse.
Shadows the color of a mirror’s back
break across faces. The luck
is always bad. This light is brittle,
old pale hair kept in a letter.
The wheeze of porch swings and lopped gates
seeps from new mortar.
Wind from an axe that struck wood
a hundred years ago
lifts the thin flags of the town.
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 1975 by Betty Adcock. Reprinted from Walking Out, Louisiana State University Press, 1975, with permission of Betty Adcock, whose most recent book is Intervale: New and Selected Poems, Louisiana State University Press, 2001. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.