If I can’t have a steel bridge, an old telephone pole will do

by Pat Laster

I have always been interested in the steel bridge on Boone Road in southwest Bryant. The reason: my Grandmother Couch, so family lore goes, was walking a footbridge across that part of the Hurricane River when she fell, an accident that crippled her for life. My research doesn’t tell me when the steel bridge across that body of water was built—nor the one we traveled over as a family of eight farther up in the county that we knew as Steel Bridge or North Fork (Saline River.) That was our “swimming hole.”
Several years ago, both bridges were cut away, hoisted to nearby roadsides and replaced with nondescript spans. How nice, I thought, one of those bridges would look on my south property line. The bridge official I called knew nothing. Now, I realize it would be too large and besides, the scrap metal thieves would have it gone in no time.
So when First Electric changed out the poles in our neighborhood last week and came to the one my electric lines were attached to, I asked if I could have the old one. The man seemed delighted and laid it where I directed. What to do with it now? Oh, I’ll think about that tomorrow.
This week’s poem, in honor of National Poetry Month, is “When April Does Her Laundry” by the late Arkansas poet, Geneva I. Crook. I found it in the 1955-1956 Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas’s Annual Brochure of Poetry, which later became the Anthology. An interesting note: “Printed for the Seventeenth Year/ By The/ Morrilton Headlight/ Morrilton, Arkansas.”
I found this issue in a flea market in southern Missouri several years ago. The price was $5.00, a whopping sum for used books, but there were two copies. I’d never seen such in all my years as a PRA member. So they had to be mine. On the flyleaf of one, Mrs. Crook had written, “To my friend, Mrs. Harris.”
Here is the poem, which won PRA’s annual Light Verse contest in 1955.

WHEN APRIL DOES HER LAUNDRY - by Geneva I. Crook
When April does her laundry and hangs it out to dry,
It’s white clouds moving in the breeze against a blue-rinsed sky.
Then while her laundry’s drying she tidies up her floor
Of old oak leaves and whisks them right out her March back door.
She spreads out fresh new carpets of grass as green as jade,
Hand-launders all the flowers so colors will not fade.
She brightens wings of redbirds and freshens up their song,
Then sets them on the branches to sing the whole month long.
No time for Mother April to sit and rest awhile,
She’s busy every hour, but still has time to smile
A smile which warms seed babies and makes them feel so good
They spring from bed to grow up just like plant children should!
Then dressing up her children she hums a happy tune
And leads them through the garden to sisters May and June.
I don’t know which is happiest––the flowers, birds or I––
When April does her laundry and hangs it out to dry!

What great personification.