The Dishes

by Franco Bertucci

I am forever doing dishes.
My life can be counted in meals
and dishes with countless bedtimes
and tooth brushings squeezed in between.
And every night I can't believe it's another night
already.

Where are my domestic servants!
My soul cries out, sometimes.
I have better things to do.
No I don't. Every civilized
family on earth makes dirty dishes.
Too many of them, perhaps.
More than necessary, perhaps.
We could all dip from the serving bowl,
with our fingers,
like my wife says they do in places.
But this is what we do
and I am for tradition
and everyone should take a turn doing dishes.
I've had my turn.
No, my mother has had her turn.
I have barely begun.

This is the land of do it yourself
or buy a machine.
But I don't want a machine.
I'd rather do the dishes
than think about a machine.
Still someone out there is better at this
than me, and needs a job.
I think. Even just once a week.
Then again, I might miss them,
these dishes.
Few things will I finish in this life
but the dishes.
That is alright.
It is better to finish the dishes
than a book of poems.
Probably more poets should do the dishes
instead of writing poems.
Give their mothers a chance to sit down
and write a few poems themselves, or read them.

Too bad, my eldest daughter can't reach the faucet.
If she could, this poem might have been about
cattails bending in the wind,
bluish clouds squirming across the sky
and somewhere a dog heaving himself up
from the dusty driveway
to bark at a passing bicyclist
who is going nowhere in particular
but is about to be drenched
and possibly killed by a thunderstorm.
I take it back.
We are all glad my daughter is so little.

Awkward Guy

Poems and other embarassing things. 2010 Franco Bertucci