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