Blog Three

Laundry

BY 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.

I chose to use alliteration as my poetry term. An alliteration is the repetition of the same, or of like sounds, at the beginning of words that are close together. It tends to give poems a more rhythmic, repetitive feeling rather then so free flowing or open. The place that alliteration stands out the most to me in this poem is in the phrase "from socks to shirts the selves we shed lift off the line" I think that using the repetition to get the sense of rhythm and meter is important in this poem specifically because laundry is often thought of as a mundane, repetitive task that has it's own predicable rhythm to it. My understand of this poem is that she is applying the everyday talk of laundry to a much bigger picture. It is like she is speaking of a fresh start, and just using clean laundry to represent that.