Notes from a Laundry

Words are my children: born of me and with similar
demands for attention and immediacy.
So, while I tune out a dryer’s determined rotations
under a flickering fluorescent light and pretend
to ignore the dry hack of the frumpy, eroded woman
at the end of the row of equally-tired machines,
my hands pat chaotic pockets for a pen.

Teaching new words to fly, my ink-stained fingers
pause to caress those already laid to paper - a
solitary Braille-tango to detect leaks and bumps:
imperfections that may dare to break the flow.
Outside, purring buses glide sulphurous Leviathan paths
through the rain-slicked streets, creating neon mosaics
in their wakes – each unique and with the life-span of a sigh.