SPEED WASH

-- after Ron Padgett

Down here in the laundry room 

I lord over a tiny city

made of cleaning products.

For these base-colored buildings,

I am a tidy act of god 

calling forth natural disasters 

named Speed Wash

or Delicates.  I hope

you'll come home soon 

before an entire civilization,

a brief history, the epic song

of our two dirty lives

is cleaned to death. 

What makes you cry?

A cold and lonely road at night,

or a dead possum, or

a vicious National Geographic

magazine paper cut?

Sometimes it seems like ice

on a highway will be the last word

in danger, but sometimes

it feels like a high school

heartbreak can wreck

harder than any car.

Long-fronded cactuses

sit in West Texas

like plants made of swords,

and hurtful words

hide even in churches,

but right now the worst

of the Great Plains

is what isn't there.