If You Have to Wash the DishesStep into that spill of sunlight puddled on the kitchen floor. Feel it on your feet, your hands, let it warm your face and paint lava inside your lids. Let water pour like a liquid miracle from stainless steel heavens into your waiting palms.
It seems like we rotated the dishwashing duties among the three of us kids, except I don't remember my older brother or sister ever doing them. My brother even tried to convince me it was written in some sacred book that the youngest had to do the dishes (and mow the lawn...), leaving older siblings to much more impoertant tasks. My sister mostly just tried this: "the dumbest have to do the dishes." We sprared our chilxdren such mythic lore.
From out of the dishwater this little poem came.
Washing the Dishes
“Those dishes won’t wash themselves”
my mother was fond of saying.
Part of her treasure chest of cliches and sayings,
“Zombie like vivid surliness / sharpened like a spear” - as a mom of two teenagers, I am well acquainted with this state! 😂 This is a marvelous poem, Larry. I love the notion of your mind on walkabout and how thoroughly I can feel that day-dreamy state and the sudden wrenching out of it with the line “now you can wash the floor.”
"As soon as my hands hit the water / my mind went on walkabout." You bring us right into your childhood kitchen & the mental havens you found there. It sounds far from blissful but an essential way of caring for yourself at that tender age. I love that you still daydream while washing dishes, only now out of Larryness rather than necessity! Beautiful poem.
Thank you Rebekah for your wonderful comment. I love that term "Larryness", though it might send some into shivers and shock! I love the John Lennobn song "Imagine," in part because it has the line "You Might say I'm a Dreamer..." Yes, I am! I dream now of meeting Lisa and you one day, and laughing together and meeting the people behind the poems!
In an earlier chapter of her life, my mother was an internationally renowned Emily Dickinson scholar. I am quite certain that I was the only kid in my elementary school who could recite:
One of my favorites! I memorized it early, though I couldn't say what age I was. Maybe elementary or middle school? I also once used it in a talk I gave about poetry and humility and reclaiming practices of civil discourse.
Oh my goodness. This brings back such happy memories. I homeschooled my older kids (now all adults and teens), and I wedged in a lot of poetry. They loved that poem and would shout the whole thing in unison--"I'M NOBODY, WHO ARE YOU????????" 😁😊
Being in the same family, the first poem I remember memorizing was also If You Have to Wash the Dishes. But the first poem I remember really falling in love with is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I just learned that T. S. Eliot was only 21 when he started writing that poem. I was probably around the same age when I scrawled all the notes in the margins in my copy of his Collected Poems, 1909-1962. My notes are painfully unprofound by comparison. ;)
If anyone looks it up and sees a review where Merops is a bee eating bird in southern Europe, though this is true, it is NOT IMO, the Merops of Emerson and the critic or reviewer misses Emerson’s deeper connection to the ancient Vedas.
Also, when I read this poem, a long time ago, the word fame was the word name.
I love the patchwork quilt of this poem! The spareness of the stanza about your mom washing the dishes and you mostly not noticing particularly struck me.
Thank you, Lisa 💛. I ended up feeling the same way about that stanza, mostly because it hit me pretty hard how little I did notice about the house as a little kid. Stuff just got done.
What a lovely little collection. From the warmth of letting the former owners in to the “joy in the drudgery” to now being able to see all your mother did to the present day. And I too would much rather load than unload!
Thank you, Karri! Yes, this was such a satisfying exercise. I feel like I could have gone on and on on this subject for sure. For me, loading the dishwasher feels like putting together a puzzle (another thing I love to do).
The first poem I think I ever memorized was a father's day poem that someone on the bus was taking home from school - I asked if I could borrow it until my stop and memorized it on the way home so I could copy it down and give it to my dad. The first one I ever memorized just for fun was The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. I memorized the whole thing the summer before I knew we'd be studying it in seventh grade. Still one of my favourite accomplishments. 😊
Both of these are wonderful stories, A. Memorizing to write down and share with your dad—what parent would not love that! And memorizing the Raven! Now that’s a major achievement!
How lovely that the chore of washing dishes can become a ritual with intent! I did a lot of dishwashing last year when our dishwasher was broken but thankfully that issue has been resolved!
As far as the earliest poem I can remember, I believe it was Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Why I do not know....probably for an English class.
That’s one of the few poems I remember reading as a kid, too. I went to a middle school named after Robert Frost, so we seemed to read him more than any other poet.
This is lovely, Lisa. You create wonder even in the simplest of acts, such as washing the dishes. "Let water pour like a liquid miracle/from stainless steel heavens/into your waiting palms." Ah, I had never equated mriacles and dishwashing, but I do now! It reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh's encouragement to take our time with such tasks, bring our attention to them, and just be in that moment, of washing the dishes.
We had a wonderful 7th grade teacher, and memorizing and rtecitig poetry in class was one of the things we did. "Trees" by Sargeant Joyce Kilmer" was my first memorized poem. I remember my dad suggested it,and it was short and not full fo big words, so shy me took the plunge! Choosing his suggestion did not exempt me from dishwashing (before dishwashers wee standard). And my first semi-real job in high school was as a dishwasher!
Thank you, Larry! And I’m looking forward to going and reading “Trees.” It’s pretty special how a teacher’s legacy can still live on inside a person decades down the line.
The first poem I memorized was also Shel Silverstein: Sara Sylvia Cynthia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out. I'm not sure I'm up to writing that one! But I love the concept--thank you for sharing. And I agree with Kim: paint lava inside your lids is lovely.
My first poems were probably nursery rhymes— they still stick with me. But one of the first that I fell in love with such that I had to memorize it was Crossing the Bar: Sunset and evening star and one clear call for me
And may there be no moaning of the bar when I put out to sea.
If that’s the gift I leave this world - that someone enjoyed or even looked forward to a necessary domestic evil because of a poem I wrote, I think I could be quite content with that legacy! 😂
I love your poem and how it transports the reader to the experience and refigures it to some new and wondrous. When I was something like 13, an adult mentor gave me a section of May Sarton's Now I Become Myself, which spoke to my soul and has followed me my whole life (I'm 57).
It seems like we rotated the dishwashing duties among the three of us kids, except I don't remember my older brother or sister ever doing them. My brother even tried to convince me it was written in some sacred book that the youngest had to do the dishes (and mow the lawn...), leaving older siblings to much more impoertant tasks. My sister mostly just tried this: "the dumbest have to do the dishes." We sprared our chilxdren such mythic lore.
From out of the dishwater this little poem came.
Washing the Dishes
“Those dishes won’t wash themselves”
my mother was fond of saying.
Part of her treasure chest of cliches and sayings,
her wisdom cache for every occasion.
^
When it was my time to dive in,
Zombie like vivid surliness
sharpened like a spear.
^
As soon as my hands it the water
my mind went on walkabout.
A lifetime of perfecting
the sacred art of daydreaming.
^
Lost in some alternative universe
Until the water overflowed and
spilled all over
an opening for my father to say,
“now you can wash the floor.”
^
Maturity and vocation,
parenthood and partnership
bargaining and negotiations
over whose turn it is
to do the dishes.
^
All these years later,
I am still at the sink,
pretending it is an act of mindful bliss.
Yet my mind still wonders and wanders
across this bright night sky.
“Zombie like vivid surliness / sharpened like a spear” - as a mom of two teenagers, I am well acquainted with this state! 😂 This is a marvelous poem, Larry. I love the notion of your mind on walkabout and how thoroughly I can feel that day-dreamy state and the sudden wrenching out of it with the line “now you can wash the floor.”
Thank you Lisa! The teenage years are their own paradox and enigma!
My mind went on walkabout 🙂
"As soon as my hands hit the water / my mind went on walkabout." You bring us right into your childhood kitchen & the mental havens you found there. It sounds far from blissful but an essential way of caring for yourself at that tender age. I love that you still daydream while washing dishes, only now out of Larryness rather than necessity! Beautiful poem.
Thank you Rebekah for your wonderful comment. I love that term "Larryness", though it might send some into shivers and shock! I love the John Lennobn song "Imagine," in part because it has the line "You Might say I'm a Dreamer..." Yes, I am! I dream now of meeting Lisa and you one day, and laughing together and meeting the people behind the poems!
We will make it happen!!! I think that’s a dream that’s meant to come true.
I love that your mind still wonders and wanders. And that you share those wonderings and wanderings with us.
Thank you Karri. I expect the wondering and wandering will continue until the last bus home, for better and worse!
I love this, Larry! It made me laugh when your dad got a chance to fit in a dadism, too 😁.
Thank you Margaret Ann. I grew up with cliches, sayings, proverbial wisdom and loving mockery!
😁
"I met a gin soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis......"
First line of first "poem".
(memorized for my very first, very loud rock band)
A wonderful line!
You started at the top, Chuck! God bless the Honky Tonks and the Stones!
In an earlier chapter of her life, my mother was an internationally renowned Emily Dickinson scholar. I am quite certain that I was the only kid in my elementary school who could recite:
"I'm nobody, who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog."
I love this!!! And love the image of a little girl walking about reciting it.
One of my favorites! I memorized it early, though I couldn't say what age I was. Maybe elementary or middle school? I also once used it in a talk I gave about poetry and humility and reclaiming practices of civil discourse.
Oh my goodness. This brings back such happy memories. I homeschooled my older kids (now all adults and teens), and I wedged in a lot of poetry. They loved that poem and would shout the whole thing in unison--"I'M NOBODY, WHO ARE YOU????????" 😁😊
Being in the same family, the first poem I remember memorizing was also If You Have to Wash the Dishes. But the first poem I remember really falling in love with is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I just learned that T. S. Eliot was only 21 when he started writing that poem. I was probably around the same age when I scrawled all the notes in the margins in my copy of his Collected Poems, 1909-1962. My notes are painfully unprofound by comparison. ;)
I clearly need to go read it! Considering my love of poetry, I am remarkably unacquainted with T.S Eliot.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is such a magnificent poem. I fell in love with it in high school and it's led to a lifelong obsession with Eliot.
"Polished poems are lovely things, but the process of opening to the possibility of a poem, any poem—I think that’s where the biggest magic happens"
🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂yup🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂
I love being surrounded by people who get it. ❤️
Not sure of first poem. However, one of first:
Merops
What care I, so they stand the same,—
Things of the heavenly mind,—
How long the power to give them fame
Tarries yet behind?
Thus far to-day your favors reach,
O fair, appeasing Presences!
Ye taught my lips a single speech,
And a thousand silences.
Space grants beyond his fated road
No inch to the god of day,
And copious language still bestowed
One word, no more, to say.
If anyone looks it up and sees a review where Merops is a bee eating bird in southern Europe, though this is true, it is NOT IMO, the Merops of Emerson and the critic or reviewer misses Emerson’s deeper connection to the ancient Vedas.
Also, when I read this poem, a long time ago, the word fame was the word name.
This is new to me! Thank you for sharing, Jim.
Dishwashing
.
We moved into our new house, my oldest daughter
then so small, standing on a stool at the kitchen sink
splashing the bubbles, her way of washing the dishes.
.
A knock at the door: the former owner, his own small daughter.
I let them in, which seems so foolish now. It was winter dark.
But they just wanted to say goodbye to their house
and my daughter, too little to question
strangers appearing out of nowhere
kept splashing.
///
Our dishwasher broke once and I was annoyed to find
that even the dirty swish of hot water and soap
could be comforting, could be meditative, could be fun
(DANGIT) and resigned myself to feeling joy even in drudgery.
///
My mom did dishes; I think my dad did too.
We four sisters did dishes.
But mostly my mom. But mostly I didn’t notice.
///
It’s split crookedly down the middle, a little heavier on my side,
on who does the dishes now. My husband knows that I like
loading the dishwasher, and empties it for me as a treat.
He washes more of the awkward things—
big blue pots; grim cast iron; sheet pans that fill the counters—
and I’m more likely to care
for the hand-wash-onlies:
vintage milk glass, flour sifter, the slim little straws.
I love the patchwork quilt of this poem! The spareness of the stanza about your mom washing the dishes and you mostly not noticing particularly struck me.
Thank you, Lisa 💛. I ended up feeling the same way about that stanza, mostly because it hit me pretty hard how little I did notice about the house as a little kid. Stuff just got done.
What a lovely little collection. From the warmth of letting the former owners in to the “joy in the drudgery” to now being able to see all your mother did to the present day. And I too would much rather load than unload!
Thank you, Karri! Yes, this was such a satisfying exercise. I feel like I could have gone on and on on this subject for sure. For me, loading the dishwasher feels like putting together a puzzle (another thing I love to do).
The first poem I think I ever memorized was a father's day poem that someone on the bus was taking home from school - I asked if I could borrow it until my stop and memorized it on the way home so I could copy it down and give it to my dad. The first one I ever memorized just for fun was The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. I memorized the whole thing the summer before I knew we'd be studying it in seventh grade. Still one of my favourite accomplishments. 😊
I love this story about you memorizing the poem on the bus! What a sweet daughter. ❤️
Both of these are wonderful stories, A. Memorizing to write down and share with your dad—what parent would not love that! And memorizing the Raven! Now that’s a major achievement!
How lovely that the chore of washing dishes can become a ritual with intent! I did a lot of dishwashing last year when our dishwasher was broken but thankfully that issue has been resolved!
As far as the earliest poem I can remember, I believe it was Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Why I do not know....probably for an English class.
That Frost poem was a good one to start with, Karri!
That’s one of the few poems I remember reading as a kid, too. I went to a middle school named after Robert Frost, so we seemed to read him more than any other poet.
A window oft sits
Behind the vile pile of plates.
Gods invitation.
Love that! The least one should get is a good view while washing!
Gods invitation - beautiful!
This is lovely, Lisa. You create wonder even in the simplest of acts, such as washing the dishes. "Let water pour like a liquid miracle/from stainless steel heavens/into your waiting palms." Ah, I had never equated mriacles and dishwashing, but I do now! It reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh's encouragement to take our time with such tasks, bring our attention to them, and just be in that moment, of washing the dishes.
We had a wonderful 7th grade teacher, and memorizing and rtecitig poetry in class was one of the things we did. "Trees" by Sargeant Joyce Kilmer" was my first memorized poem. I remember my dad suggested it,and it was short and not full fo big words, so shy me took the plunge! Choosing his suggestion did not exempt me from dishwashing (before dishwashers wee standard). And my first semi-real job in high school was as a dishwasher!
Thank you, Larry! And I’m looking forward to going and reading “Trees.” It’s pretty special how a teacher’s legacy can still live on inside a person decades down the line.
Absolutely! Ms. chandler was a remarkable teacher!
The first poem I memorized was also Shel Silverstein: Sara Sylvia Cynthia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out. I'm not sure I'm up to writing that one! But I love the concept--thank you for sharing. And I agree with Kim: paint lava inside your lids is lovely.
Ooooh I'll have to go reread that one! Thank you for sharing, Loralee!
My first poems were probably nursery rhymes— they still stick with me. But one of the first that I fell in love with such that I had to memorize it was Crossing the Bar: Sunset and evening star and one clear call for me
And may there be no moaning of the bar when I put out to sea.
That’s lovely! I’d never read it before. Thank you for sharing, Melanie!
Oh, I love this poem, Lisa.
Thank you so much, Margaret Ann!
such a heartful, honest poem. and actually, it makes me want to wash the dishes. thank you for this, Lisa 💚
If that’s the gift I leave this world - that someone enjoyed or even looked forward to a necessary domestic evil because of a poem I wrote, I think I could be quite content with that legacy! 😂
I love that you wrote such a beautiful poem about washing dishes! Am saving this prompt for later!
Thank you, Kym! If you end up writing a poem and care to share, I’d love to read it!
I love your poem and how it transports the reader to the experience and refigures it to some new and wondrous. When I was something like 13, an adult mentor gave me a section of May Sarton's Now I Become Myself, which spoke to my soul and has followed me my whole life (I'm 57).
Thank you, Scott! “Now I become myself” - what a beautiful title! I’d never read the poem before now and it’s one worth reading again.
It's a beautiful poem and speaks differently but no less powerfully almost every time I return to it.