Bluing
Sharing a spidery basement
with the furnace,
our washing machine
had two cycles—hot & cold.
I discovered my mom
hand-washing
her “good” whites
in the kitchen sink,
with some kind of blue
liquid instead of soap powder.
Mom had no time
to explain the alchemy
of bluing to a nine-year-old.
Her life was her work.
The Blue Boy
(pampered fop!)
haunted our living room
from a picture hook
above the sofa. The beauty
of bluing’s ultramarine
put his satin doublet
to shame.
Later on,
I noticed ladies in Cadillacs
with bluish hair—same process.
My mother would never do such a thing
About the Author: R. A. Allen’s poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in Poetry Online, B O D Y, The Penn Review, RHINO, The Los Angeles Review, Glassworks, New Critique, etc. He has been nominated for a BotN and two Pushcarts. He lives with his wife in Memphis, Tennessee, a city of light and sound. https://nyq.org/poets/otherpub.php?pid=1787
Image Credit: Thomas Gainsborough “The Blue Boy” (1770) Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
As It Ought To Be 
