Words and Dishes

I no longer wash the dishes.
A machine does that.
It washes and rinses and dries them.

My job? To put everything back:
plates to shelves, pots to hooks,
knives to drawers.

The resulting order
lends a kind of practical grace:
I know where everything is
and can simply reach it.

It’s not quite the same with memories
or keeping track
of people I love and need.

Words no longer stack
and loved ones don’t hang there on hooks.
My brain is a hodgepodge of drawers.

I am stuck with filing requests.
It’s a dreary task
and fails to return what I ask.

So here I wait,
used words on the end of my tongue
that refuse to come.

To myself, I do a lot of humming.