I wash dishes well, or good, as in morally correct.
I do not believe in air drying.
Air drying washed dishes
is passive aggressive cleanliness,
leaving the remains of the job
for someone else to arrange in the dish cabinet,
bowls in bowls, plates on plates, butter knives in their appropriate slot next to the forks,
prongs pointing down so as not to jab
the finger tips of the one eating the next dessert.
I use dish towels, which I wash daily.
Even the crisp stuff stuck on the fry pan
after scrambled eggs are burned to long
are scoured smooth, the pan hooked to the peg board
next to the next bigger or smaller pan,
depending on how many eggs were aborted.
I like the kitchen to look as it did
before the cooking began.
I do this because I am, yes, a little OCD.
My coins are stacked denominationally on my desk like
the Catholic, Lutheran and Methodist churches on
Main Street in my town, all separate and unequal,
though sometimes, I hate to admit it, the pennies are
scattered like Latter Day Saints, two by two
on the blue ceramic plate next to my keys.
(We can’t be all perfect)
but mostly I do it,
(wash dishes, that is, for you who have lost the thread)
because I am unable to cook.
Lucky if I can pour cereal and add milk.
But my wife can cook, well, even good
and we have established one of the
88 Commandments of Happily Married Life as
“Who so ever cooketh, washeth not”
so matrimonial harmony is marinated.
Like so much of my life.
I plant daisies and dames rocket because
I do not know a socket wrench from a pocket watch.
I am a teacher because I am not yet a dolphin.
Compensatory expertise is a success of sorts,
allowing each a provenance for personal glory.
The coin stacks are just one of the perks.
Poems by Ken 