Poetry Friday: A Laundry Poem

Today, a laundry poem that I chuckled while writing, because I am working on my own mountain between attacking the last of the last of the moving boxes. And we all need a little touch of comic relief + heroism now and then, don't we? Sometimes it is just the thing.

Joan of D’ark and Dirty

Laundry is the great monster

Mommy wrestles; her eternal foe.

Every day, long tentacles flailing from the

Hamper, dripping ooze in the form of

Socks and spotted onesies, by the pound.

She hacks at it, vigorously sorting its many limbs

Into piles: whites, darks, reds.

She rises periodically from the latest fray,

Ceremoniously mounting the stairs,

A badge of crisp pillowcase on her arm.

She strategizes the endless new advance,

Not faltering in the face of the grim smells

Of covert hand grenades the enemy leaves

Moldering in the depths of the diaper bag.

We are polished, lest the monster take our very skins

And admonished sternly of his wily ways

She sprays over us her protective elixirs:  

Tide (jumbo, extra concentrated)

And Shout, in little rhythmic squirts.

Laundry sometimes roars and beats Its chest

Rattling the floorboards with the throaty,

Conquering cry of a monster that has

Boldly taken our last dish towel to his bowels.  

But, Mommy rallies with a Monday morning war cry.

There is a great clanging of machine lids and

The sound of lusty Patsy Cline yodeling from the basement

And before we know it, Laundry is only a simpering

Trio of washcloths and a single pair of underwear

Slinking there behind the dryer hose.