After the Ecstasy, The You Know What

Because we need protection from the elements
Humans invented clothes
At first likely crude animal skins
Grass mats perhaps
Later woven garments and fine leather
The poor might only have a garment or two
The wealthy far more
But either way, clothes became
Washable, mendable - and therefore durable
As long as you care for them
If you are lucky enough
(As most modern humans are)
To have a full wardrobe’s worth
Then you are familiar with this process of
Washing, drying and putting away clothes
Which we call “laundry”
What most people don’t know
Or, more accurately, don’t realize until later in life
Is that, unless you are wealthy enough to
Hire someone else to do your work,
You will be doing this laundry
For the rest of your life
It will become a regular thing
A well-deserved cliché
You will do laundry in the best of times
And in the worst of times
You will own garments that
You will wash, dry and store
Hundreds if not thousands of times
The endless repetition will feel futile
It will feel like the very definition of futile
The old Zen expression
“After the ecstasy, the laundry”
Is not wrong
Yet as we feel society fracturing
As we veer radically off the map
Can a slight comfort be found
In the feeling that laundry, at least
Shall always be with us?
Does this drudgery offer us the gift of consistency?
Is the endless cycle of laundry stabilizing, grounding?
Because although the mess is mighty
Our grand systems exposed as freakishly fragile
Laundry is still here
To say look at these miracles:
Running water!
Reliable electricity!
Machines that function!
And the luxury of a space to keep it all
How can I resent laundry
When its very existence implies home?
If there is laundry, there is hope
And how can I be annoyed
At that?