Spring Laundry

Laundry is for the birds.
I have hired a passel of robins to grip socks,
underwear, light blouses in their beaks.
They coast down the stairs to the laundry room.
Occasionally en route they leave muddy white ink blots
on the floor, but I don't care,
as long as they're taking care of the children's
clothes, stinking of crayons and spring mud
and cafeterias. In return
for neat stacks that the birds nudge into drawers
I provide platters of coiling worms,
dug fresh out of the garden. It's a good swap:
the robins indoors, singing to themselves as they work,
I in the rows of chilly dirt, dreaming of sugar snap peas
and of being a bird.