Saturday, February 27, 2016

Poetry Workshop With Ruth Moose

Why write a poem?  Ruth says, "because I was given it to write."  She wrote the book, "Laundry."

Laundry 
Ruth Moose

All our life 
so much laundry; 
each day’s doing or not 
comes clean, 
flows off and away 
to blend with other sins 
of this world. Each day 
begins in new skin, 
blessed by the elements 
charged to take us 
out again to do or undo 
what’s been assigned. 
From socks to shirts 
the selves we shed 
lift off the line 
as if they own 
a life apart 
from the one we offer. 
There is joy in clean laundry. 
All is forgiven in water, sun 
and air. We offer our day’s deeds 
to the blue-eyed sky, with soap and prayer, 
our arms up, then lowered in supplication.


Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early 
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, 
then with cracked hands that ached 
from labor in the weekday weather made 
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 


I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call, 
and slowly I would rise and dress, 
fearing the chronic angers of that house, 


Speaking indifferently to him, 
who had driven out the cold 
and polished my good shoes as well. 
What did I know, what did I know 
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Note:  Your Daily Poem 
           Library of Congress
           Writers' Almanac
           Academy of American Poets

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