(no subject)
slammerkinbabe pointed out it was National Poetry Month and related a story about how, when asked for a poetry recommendation, there was one that jumped out at her from her memory and she had to search around for it. She then decided to post it, both in honor of the month and to ensure she would not lose it again.
This of course reminded me of the similar thing I went through when looking for this poem that is one of my favourites. So, in honor of National Poetry Month, here it is, one of my very favourite poems.
Sorting Laundry by Elisavietta Ritchie
Folding clothes,
I think of folding you
into my life.
Our king-sized sheets
like tablecloths
for the banquets of giants,
pillowcases, despite so many
washings, seams still
holding our dreams.
Towels patterned orange and green,
flowered pink and lavender,
gaudy, bought on sale,
reserved, we said, for the beach,
refusing, even after years,
to bleach into respectability.
So many shirts and skirts and pants
recycling week after week, head over heels,
recapitulating themselves.
All those wrinkles
to be smoothed, or else
ignored; they're in style.
Myriad uncoupled socks
which went paired into the foam
like those creatures in the ark.
And what's shrunk
is tough to discard
even for Goodwill.
In pockets, surprises:
forgotten matches,
lost screws clinking on enamel;
paper clips, whatever they held
between shiny jaws, now
dissolved or clogging the drain;
well-washed dollars, legal tender
for all debts public and private,
intact despite agitation;
and, gleaming in the maelstrom,
one bright dime,
broken necklace of good gold
you brought from Kuwait,
the strangely tailored shirt
left by a former lover ....
If you were to leave me,
if I were to fold
only my own clothes,
the convexes and concaves
of my blouses, panties, stockings, bras
turned upon themselves,
a mountain of unsorted wash
could not fill
the empty side of the bed