January 29, 2013

A gray and overcast morning, making me feel sleepy, and out of sorts.  My new Windows seems some morning just too much to deal with.  I think I will get used to it in time but its awkward, kind of like stiff new shoes that make you feel every step instead of just walking without thought.  There is hardly any birdsong and no light this morning, everything in that hazy gray, not fog but not clear either, too much humidity.  One of the big roaming dogs is across the street rolling in the grass.  Perhaps his back itches. 

Today wants a poem of joy and I am going to send one of my favorites.  I have given myself permission to send my favorites any time I need them and today I need this one . . . 

Love Calls Us to the Things of this World 

  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 awash with angels. 

  Some are in bedsheets, 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 in so rapt a quiet

that nobody seems to be there.

                                                   The soul shrinks

  From all it is about to remember,

from the punctual rape of every blessed day

and cries,

            “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry.

Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam

and clear dances done in the sight of heaven.” 

  Yet, as the sun acknowledges

with a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,

the soul descends once more in bitter love

to accept the waking body; saying now

in a changed voice as the man yawns and rises, 

            “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;

Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves,

Let lovers go sweet and fresh to be undone,

and the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating

of dark habits,

                       keeping their difficult balance.” 

                                           --Richard Wilbur 

Today is my wash day and so a poem about laundry is perfect.  My favorite line is "Let lovers go sweet and fresh to be undone" and I remember the nuns who taught me all through school in the last line, "keeping their difficult balance".   Today I need the poem to supply the "world's hunk and colors" as there are not many today, though I will say the grass is coming in a bright spring green. 

While I am doing the laundry, folding the sweet smelling towels, and hanging up the clothes to keep them smooth, I will think of all going out into the world to be . . . undone by the beauty of it, in clean clothes, in care taken for all the everyday things we do!