Hope Smothered

While I washed up dinner dishes in the pan,

the wind came from the west

bringing—

dust.

I’d just stripped all the gummed tape from the

windows.

Now I’ve got dust all over the clean dishes.

I can hardly make myself

get started cleaning again.

Mrs. Love is taking applications

for boys to do CCC work.

Any boy between eighteen and twenty-eight can join.

I’m too young

and the wrong sex

but what I wouldn’t give to be

working for the CCC

somewhere far from here,
out of the dust.

May 1935