Poems, Personal Stories, and Observations

At the Laundromat

Sixty washers and sixty dryers,
All going ’round in circles,
Never ending …

Until a buzzer rings,
Until the fat lady sings.

Here’s a family with two kids,
Here’s a senior, down on the skids —
Changing his clothes just after drying.

Here’s a young man just returned,
His clothes have disappeared, he learns,
Surprised and shocked, he looks around.

I’d wondered ’bout that lady who
Said, “Don’t know
Who these clothes belong to –
Are they mine?”

Well, eventually it was straightened out.
Indeed, she’d taken what was his
And into the dryer, along it went
Tumbling ’round and ’round, along with hers.

Next week, I visited once more.
The young man came inside the door.
I asked him if he’d got his clothes.

Of one pair socks, he was depleted,
He shrugged, not seeming too defeated —
Serenely accepting an item deleted.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

Tag Cloud

%d bloggers like this: