NaPoWriMo Day 24: Laundry Day, Ekphrastic Poem

The prompt today is to write an ekphrastic poem — that is, a poem that responds to or is otherwise inspired by a work of art. Probably the most famous ekphrastic poem in English is Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, but there is no lack of modern ekphrastic work. Take Auden’s Musee de Beaux Arts or Robert Lowell’s For the Union Dead. So go forth and find a painting, sculpture, photograph, or even a piece of music, and use it to inform your poem for today.

I have always loved Grandma Moses' work, the simple rural scenes and rustic quality. We have a copy of Sugaring Off, in our dining room. I chose to write about Wash Day, painted in 1945.


"Wash Day" by Grandma Moses














Laundry Day
Ma washed on Mondays,
heavy cotton sheets, towels
and fancy embroidered pillowcases
strung out to dry on the old rope
between oak and sugar maple,

brown-eyed baby on one hip,
bursting laundry basket on the other,
tiny socks trailing behind, wooden
clothespins stowed in her apron pocket,
one or two wedged in her mouth like straight
pins porcupining from a pincushion.

The maple was a good climbing tree
and while Ma tacked up dripping bedclothes
I'd scramble to my lookout post,
the skipper navigating swirling grass green seas.
The breeze billowed those sun-bleached sheets,
flapped and filled them like sails on a schooner,

whipped make-believe waves into meringue whitecaps,
collided them over and over against the sandy shore.
Best of all was the sweet smell of the bedclothes
when Ma unpegged the wind-dried sails
and tucked them back on our beds.