April 20th: Laundry

Today's offering is another one that isn't in my archives; my daughter sent it to me yesterday.  It's a poem about laundry.

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
by Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul  
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple  
As false dawn.
                     Outside the open window  
The morning air is all awash with angels.

    Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,  
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.  
Now they are rising together in calm swells  
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear  
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

    Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving  
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden  
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.

Here's the rest.

The illustration is from the Heartline Maternity Center in Port-au-Prince.  There aren't pulleys on this line, but this clothesline is what I thought of when I read this poem, and particularly the title:  "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World."  There's a lot of laundry to be done in a place filled with births and newborns, and it's faithfully done, day after day, in this place where sunshine and love are the two inexhaustible resources.

Here's today's line in the Progressive Poem.