a titan's laundry

As I wash clothes the bubbles agitate
and some of them take umbrage, emigrate
to free themselves from shadow, roil in whorls
round tiny suns where they themselves are worlds.

Those tiny worlds have stacks of tiny clothes
and people somewhat like me washing those.

Some of them are white, and some are black
and some are Botha, hoping they won't lack
for space when they're excluded from the ranch
they took by force while claiming that their branch
of evolution was the cat's meow
and every other colour had to bow.

The bubbles burst before I clearly see
what I've to do with them, and them with me.
The architect who dreams us is too pure
to let such blown-up baubles long endure.

A Titan's Laundry appeared in The Armchair Aesthete.