A white pick-up, creased with rust,
parked alongside a washboard road
with a washing machine weighting the truck bed.  
A power pole marks a driveway’s end.  There’s
a cable looped down and plugged in, hijacking
current from above.  And a garden hose
filling the tub.  A woman stands on
the tailgate, sorts whites from colors,
an earlier load spread over fence lines
to dry on the way to being worn under
another sun.

It took me a few minutes to put it all together, Lynn, but what a scene! Amazing and lovely. At first I misread that the "cable looping down" connects the current to the "yard beyond" rather than to the machine in the truckbed -- and then I placed the whole next S in the "yard beyond" too.
The "creased with wrinkles" seems redundant.
This whole picture, nits and misreads aside, both real and surreal in a transcendent way. Tom

Needs work, I know.  At present, seems to ask "And? So?  Your point being?"  Not to mention a need for clarity as to the whole.  thanks for the looksee and comments.  ;)

No, I disagree, never for a moment will this poem ask "Your point being"! A bit more clarity in laying out the mechanics of the picture is all, maybe.

Made several changes; deleted the yard and added a line near the end.

this is a wonderful picture
of a foreign land.  i'd change
nothing.  only read the edited
version, but i needed no point.

thanks,

tiko

edits are thanks to nudging by tom.  and a line added gets me closer to a current exploring tasks, or jobs we undertake, in whatever way or by whatever means are available. 

thanks, tiko.  guess i'll move this to Submit.  ;)

Lynn, I read this and firstly thought as you noted, "so?' Then still in that frame of mind thought about the peculiarity of the scene, realizing that the peculiarity only exists in the witness and in this case witnesses with access to this convenience without the gerry-rigging of the described entrepreneur. Then I wondered how the poem would read to the woman standing in the bed of the pickup. What kind of sense or reaction would it elicit? How would she construe the scene or react to its being considered a poem. I often wondered if the people in Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men ever got to see their pictures and if they comprehended how they were being viewed in the volume after being sold to patrons of bookstores.


Given the circumstance, perhaps the language could be even more stark and end at sky after changing it to sun?

It would distance the work further from any poetic conceit.

larry

Your wonderings have prompted me to further adjust this one, Larry.  I think it may be closer now, but am too close at the moment to know.  thanks.

Lynn, I think it works. It is not as pretty as couplets or neat stanzas, but the scene is not described to be pretty or some quaint travelogue note. Those kind of images flow from Dineson or Forrester -- 'oh look at the quaint natives.'

larry

I think I like this better.  I may biff the En Route to and leave the title with local only.  Valle Guadalupe is Baja sur wine country -- acres and acres of vines and small wineries, a few larger wineries, too.  Long dirt roads between the cellars and tasting rooms.  I've witnessed these washing machines on p.u. trucks a few times; I love how a simple thing like having the washer but no well and no power doesn't get in the way of laundering what needs  to be laundered! 

After "to dry," I don't feel like anything is being said.
Can't agree that the energy of the poem is "look at the quaint natives" at all. I don't think the strangeness is not in the eye of the beholder, but inherent in the appropriation of a large artifact from one world being plugged into use in an entirely different world.

Love this Lynn.  The polish you've rubbed up with your editing! I agree with your biffing thoughts about the title.  As to the end, I wonder if you nixed the last two lines and said something more about the woman, or the truck driver instead, it might have even more impact. 

Hi, Tom.  Thanks for staying with this one.  I'd hoped that what happened after "to dry" was the sense of an ongoing cycle [wash rinse dry wear wash etc.], the sense of you live, you work, you do it cleanly, simply.

Which brings me to Sue's comments
particularly in regard to last lines and changes to add something more about the woman or truck driver or man.  Will think on this, let it rest, and think on it some more -- but I rather like the idea [at the moment] of a duller ending; seems as if it says something about the scene/chore/steadiness of still getting it done.  (However, I may think differently tomorrow.)

Thanks all for suggestions and comments.  You've helped me mucho!

My first thought was 'wow, do people still do that?'.  I think my only nit is I liked to know more about how the woman feels.  Some men can do these sorts of things all day long and never give it a thought.  But a woman -- that's her laundry, it's part of the way she takes care of her family whom she loves.  What woman could be happy doing that?  She must be deeply sad inside.

cheryl