Towels, Waiting

Now and again, I remind myself that Ruby Tabeata, the main character in the Beat Street Series, wants to be a poet when she grows up, like the Beat poets around her (Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Amiri Baranka, Charles Bukowski, Elise Cowan and many more). 

I love writing Ruby's poetry and trying to jump into her generation's style and language. But today my own poem started forming because of the times we're in.

Towels wait patiently to be folded, unmoving cotton letting me know 

They can't sustain being thrown onto the top shelf of the closet and that

Eventually they'll fall down and dirtify themselves, meaning I'll have to wash them again and lose the time I so desperately covet

Even though coveting is one of the deadliest sins

I can only fold, fold, fold fold fold

Keeping fear from wrapping wet, hairy arms around my throat like a long-dead lover come to snuggle again 

And like a shrink who understands you, he smiles and waits for me to talk and I do, spilling it all like peanuts into his lap. Boys and girls, I say, my husband contracted shingles  many years ago and that migrated to his eye.

Doctor fixed it and we thought we were done

But anxiety got him too in the age of Coronavirus and after a long protracted cold

The monster returned to attack his peripheral vision 

Ah, but there's always more in a doctor's office and the doctor sez so, spilling his own peanuts

This virus could migrate to the other eye or even the brain, and I say God forbid to myself so the doctor won't hear me

Instead he rattles off this week's menu like a waiter: surgery and in-office injections

Towels are waiting patiently to be folded, and I fold them

Because it is one of the only things that makes me breathe right now

In, out, fold, smell the clean

A kind of meditation for the meditation averse
Folding, folding, folding fold while I look out at 

Calm blue glass lake outside as we 

Hide away out here pretending the world can't get at us

Every day waking to say, will he get better but he isn't yet 

Towels are all neat on the shelves now

Just like when we first moved in so full of hope

The way all possessions look when you unpack them

Waiting for death, waiting for Guffman, waiting for love, it

Doesn't matter.

They will always be waiting.

'Til we're ready to fold them again

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I'll leave you today with a group of great middle school books that includes Dragon Future from my writer pal Kandi Wyatt, as well as The Beat on Ruby's Street:

https://www.raeknightly.com/post/middle-grade-treasures-book-promotion-for-young-readers-april-25-may-25-2020

Woman with towel photo: Debs (ò‿ó)♪