Untitled (Piles of laundry sitting in a row) - flipside B

Untitled

Piles of laundry sitting in a row,
Whites, and darks and delicate too,
And a pile of sheets, dumped there now.

They watch each other with hateful eyes,
Wondering who'll be washed first, and last,
When mother put in a load of silk ties!

They looked again in the hope they were wrong,
but silk ties they were, all shapes and sizes,
Fat, short, thin, and some were very, very long.

Every color under the sun went in too,
Red and orange and yellow and green,
Black and brown and purple and blue.

The clothes were frantic, why weren't they washed?
But mother put in another load, and another and more,
Till all the ties were in and firmly mashed.

Mother dumped in soap, and started the machine.
Then it stopped, and the ties slithered out,
Tied together in a rope long and longer and very lean.

Then elves started marching down, by two, by four and six.
They slid and they rolled, they walked and they played,
They marched and did some fancy tricks.

Then they grabbed all the clothes and carried them away,
Up the rope and into the machine,
And no one knows what happened to this day.

1983

Thoughts and Comments

Published under my maiden name: Barbara Muller

Chrysalis
Robert McQueen High School
Reno, Nevada
Volume 1, No. 1
June 1983

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