Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Soap Sonnet

What are the real qualities of a clean shirt?
Who could teach it to know that?
Warm, soapy socks in your hands
Are slippery, sensuous.

Dials and knobs tell it all
But tell it nothing else.
If there is joy on laundry day
Its because it works by itself.

Complete with ugly and dumb,
Only as smart as a drowned flea circus,
It can’t be denied it knows what its work is;
Results are good but you wonder why?

While you whistle and sing filling this thing,
The magic goes in with the clothes.

6 comments:

Russell CJ Duffy said...

The one thing I hate is doing the bloody ironing. The washing machine does its job and then the wind drys the clothes and then either my wife, or I do the ironing. And with four females in the family it get very confusing as to who wears what!

Nice post Russell.

Russell Ragsdale said...

Thanks CJ! I felt a little out of place writing this one. I usually only write about people. I'll keep working on it and thanks for the kind comments!

Sounds like you've got the family thing well in hand. Don't do much ironing at the moment so I can get away with saying I don't mind an occasional turn at the old board. Did that sound like fools bravado to you?

Sue hardy-Dawson said...

Russel I once saw someone iron a flannel, I have never recovered from the shock, imagine waking up to find you had to iron the creases out of the trees, the biggest joy of laundry is definately that it works by its self, my dad said once the best thing he ever built was a linen basket, it wasn't that he loved its appearence over much, but as he said every week he would put his clothes in it and a few days later they would appeare washed and ironed in the draw, not a new man my dad

Russell Ragsdale said...

Hi Sue! You dad sounds great! Flannel, yes definately I like things that appear normal when not ironed. Ironing the trees? There'd be a definate start of an Ent revolution!

I tried to leave a comment on your wonderful new poem yesterday but blogger wouldn't let me. It was fantastic!

Sue hardy-Dawson said...

Naughty blogger, thank-you any way Russel

Russell Ragsdale said...

Thanks for the sympathy, Sue!