Spring Cleaning.

Among other things, I did 12 loads of laundry. Am so looking to curling up in the crisp cotton sheets that make their appearance this time of year.

Ode to Ironing

Poetry is white:
it comes from the water covered with drops,
it wrinkles and piles up,
the skin of this planet must be stretched,
the sea of its whiteness must be ironed,
and the hands move and move,
the holy surfaces are smoothed out,
and that is how things are made:
hands make the world each day,
fire becomes one with steel,
linen, canvas, and cotton arrive
from the combat of the laundries,
and out of light a dove is born:
chastity returns from the foam.

-Pablo Neruda
translated by Stephen Mitchell

Dusting needs to be done here a couple times a week due to our surfeit of cat dander, people dander, plaster dust (the house being a work in progress) and urban grit. Will probably have achieved some sort of enlightenment when I can be so graceful about this activity; it's easily my least favorite chore.

Dusting

Thank you for these tiny
particles of ocean salt,
pearl-necklace viruses,
winged protozoans:
for the infinite,
intricate shapes
of submicroscopic
living things.

For algae spores
and fungus spores,
bonded by vital
mutual genetic cooperation,
spreading their
inseparable lives
from equator to pole.

My hand, my arm,
make sweeping circles.
Dust climbs the ladder of light.
For this infernal, endless chore,
for these eternal seeds of rain:
Thank you. For dust.

-Marilyn Nelson