Launderette

Three coins-worth to go.
The time could be better spent than
watching the rough and tumble of clothes
waving and drowning
in a hot grey soup.

Soon, after opening the door, all
condensed with heat and vigour, shirts
will fall out, exhausted,
arms clasped round trouser legs,
pleading for them not to walk out.
Socks avert their gaze, turn in on themselves,
embarrassed at the display of
such sentimentality. Under
pants and t-shirts pretend to be each other,
the precursor to cross-dressing,
and a pillowcase sneezes, sensitised
to the powder.

The soul goes out of your clothes
in the launderette, lost and wasted,
washed away to the cold coast.
And I will have to wear it back in again:
the soul being the soil of the body.