Laundry
Whatever
happened to washday?
The old
children’s song designated Monday,
but perhaps
that was when laundry took all day
and
employed wringers and clothespins
and
clotheslines and sunshine.
Now,
washing machines and dryers
almost do
the job themselves
indoors, with
little intervention,
requiring
me (only) to load and unload,
to fold and
distribute.
If I had a
washday, I imagine,
there might
be time again to ponder,
between
agitation and the wringing out,
the items
pegged to my backyard line:
the heavy
blankets, the workday jeans,
the
sun-bright sheets, the t-shirts,
snapping
like bright flags—
the
underpinnings of my day-to-day,
each one a
poem in its own right,
alive and
warm in the springtime breeze
and
smelling like sunshine.
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