after the ectasy --

Laundry

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.

-- Ted Kooser

Snow

The letter arrived. It bore a typo, "nex" for "new":
"I hope you like my two nex books in the spring." But
at the moment it was fall; the leaves were dropping,
green to a kind of sucked-dry brown. Or a "t"
was dropped: it should have read "next." The word,
that winter, came close to becoming a mantra: Next
time? Trust me, there won't be a "next time"! (overheard
in the throes of the "perfect marriage's" sudden dissolution)
and Oh Jesus, shit, what NEXT? (as a couple who claimed
they hadn't loved each other in years found out she was pregnant).
This was the lesson of winter: nothing is sure. The snow
slurred hard, familiar shapes to a paste. Then
it was spring. One day, a package from my friend the former
priest, as he'd promised: two sex books to read.

-- Albert Goldbarth
a leaf of "Some Leaves from the Permission Tree"