The Sluicing Machine

Specially dedicated to everyone who has washed their clothes by hand, not by choice. Especially if you have had a sick baby. I would love a dry toilet, I barely clean my house, my carbon footprint is petite, but life without a washing machine? That would take some convincing. 

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Somewhere a woman is dreaming

Of the dance, where she feels

Most awake, most herself, most alive

But when the dream is done, don’t ask

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Clothes curl foetal in the shushing

Sluicing machine, my most loved appliance

Daily, to my rescue; I have laboured

Over bathfuls of fabric, enough, enough

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Somewhere another family wakes, perplexed

By unfamiliar walls and ceilings and curtains drawn

Having slept soundly in their new home; happiness

Settles swiftly, after the months of waiting

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Without a machine for laundering garments

Stamping on the grubby stuff in soap-scum

Is the congenial stage. The sodden wretched

Back aching task is rinsing out, wringing out 

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As a child I studied my mother’s hands, so

Creditable against my blank covered digits, they

Could tell volumes, while my infantile extremities

Knew not burn of stove nor cut of knife

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Today my hand skin is coarse as dragon scales

Mythopoeia of life burnished in, expressed in skill

Of task; see how I can drape washing, deft, the

Fabric flicked, laid flat and faultless on the airer

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There is scope indoors to drape this undirtied

Selection; the outside line is peg to peg already

And if the rain comes it provides an extra rinse

Things work out, like spring follows winter

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Chicken in the fridge, pork joint

Airs on the windowsill, life currently is

Feeding me well. Not enough parsnips, but

I will soon walk into town, to top up

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Washing, two loads, spun and hung to dry

The laundry basket half emptied, it is

Always mid task, that is the nature

Of the rotational task

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Somewhere wakefulness chokes on grief

Every morning will break cold, through the lingering

Adjustive time, while normality does not return

Because its irrevocable change will not be recognised