Laundry

She likes clean laundry,

so twice a week, thrice even,

she empties the hamper, sorts by whites

and lights and colors and spends

the better part of the day

washing and hanging and folding

and sorting into hers and mine

and whoever else’s clothes appeared unwashed

and in need of cleaning, children’s and grandchildren’s

and house guests’, or any other unclaimed clothes appearing.

Winters here stymie her as the hanging,

her preference, is substituted by the dry heat

of tumbled clothes, round and round and clunking,

which she tolerates because she must, the clotheslines

removed before the skies turn to snow the yard

draped with ropes, haphazardly strung between trees

and barn and telephone poles, too cold and deep

to trudge out and clip wet clothes with frozen fingers.

She sighs at the option, not the cold or snow,

but the missing scent of wind and sunshine, summer

laundry’s residue left in drying, fresher still

than tumbled heat masked with Bounce or Downy,

weak substitutes for freshness, just not the same.

This year, fast approaching the closing of the camp

and the taking down of lines, she claims an early victory,

adding one more step to the close-up checklist:

stringing lines for hanging clothes on the front porch.

It’s unheated, but it faces the lake and is lined with windows

and the southern sun, relatively warm on a winter’s day,

warm enough to trap the sunshine, enough to dry clothes

hung there, freezing and thawing even as they dry

over time, more time, to be carried back to the house

across the yard, laid out for final thawing and warming,

then folded to trap the smell and feel of clothes

more loosely hung in summer sunshine, spring and fall.

Me? The dryer is fine, clothes warm to the touch

and soft, Bounced or Downy’d, an acceptable substitute.

But I don’t do the laundry; it’s her self-chosen job

exchanged for cleaning the bathroom, my job, done less often.

It’s a fair trade, so I’ll do my part and pick up

my clothes and put them in the hamper, even string now

the lines from east to west on the porch for winter

sunshine, completing this newly added step. I’ll carry

a basket of wet clothes across the yard, dressed

against the cold in a heavy coat and hat and mittens,

winter boots.  Perhaps it’s some husbandly duty,

“all other duties as assigned,” or perhaps it’s to avoid

the alternative, not heat tumbled clothes, but a new step

added to my own checklist, washing my own clothes,

which I can do, and have done, out of necessity,

but I never liked doing it, would prefer not to do,

why I married her, I joke, so when the question

is asked, “do you think we could ... ?”,

a rhetorical question, no answer is required.