She was a Wichita wife,
married to a lineman:
years of mending holes in overalls
stitching up their life
and waiting for his calls.
Now she trudges lonely roads,
past sagging wires and endless lines of poles,
straight as the hems she used to sew.
She heads west towards the fire
of the setting sun,
listening for his song in the wire,
threading as she goes.
Kim M. Russell, 2017
Source Unknown
My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Photo Challenge #161
The first thing that came into my head when I saw this image was that song by Glen Campbell, strangely haunting me from my childhood.
writing in north norfolk 
Reblogged this on O LADO ESCURO DA LUA.
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Thank you for another reblog!
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I love this. It works so well with the picture, and I love the echoes of the song.
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Thank you, Sarah! I’m not a country fan but I’ve always loved that song and the image just echoed it!
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of course i was drawn to this because i grew up in Kansas, and your first line packs an alliterative punch.
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The little I know about Kansas is from old films and songs. Do know that it is 87% of the size if the UK but has a much smaller population, so I imagine lots of space. Where I live in the county of Norfolk it’s flat, a bit like Holland, and we have windmills. Is Kansas flat too?
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That’s the fallacy of Kansas…that it’s flat. They have flint hills, bluffs and valleys too. But yes! Lots of space…friendly people is NO fallacy 😊 Kansas has barns, not windmills
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Reblogged this on When Angels Fly.
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Thank you so much!
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Welcome!
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Your poem is like a song. It is very sad that Glen Campbell is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s–this could almost be his wife’s song.
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I read about that recently but it wasn’t in my mind when I wrote the poem Yes, it could be his wife’s song. Now I have tears in my eyes. My mum passed away in January from pneumonia in the final stages of dementia. Such a cruel disease.
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Oh, I’m sorry my comment brought your mom to mind, Kim.
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That’s OK, Merril, she’s always there.
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Beautiful post, Kim. My parents liked Glen Campbell so I remember this song…and my middle son is a lineman!
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I think the term ‘lineman’ is so much more romantic than ‘telecoms engineer’!
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Loved this! 🙂
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Thank you!
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Awesome!
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