Sunlight Laundry

 Aged seventy-three,

I now can see

That the muse inspiring my poetry

Has always been laundry.

Ever since my first paid job

In a building named ‘Sunlight’

In Sands End

Beside the Thames

Where vans brought

Dirty sheets from Chelsea hotels

That I loaded

Into vast rotating iron cylinders

And unloaded the laundered result.

Unless the vast rotating iron cylinders

Went wrong and produced

A massive knot of wet linen,

That needed to be pried apart

With crowbars.

Ahh, those weren’t the days!

Now I just blunder around my bathroom,

Like a dalek without a death ray

Picking up little bits of laundry

With a plastic claw.