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.