The Washtub Remembers

I'm figuring and the washtub

remembers these dreams I've 

tried to make new again. 

The bathhouse wastebasket is always

the last to get taken out,

and is it because this room 

is where we come to know 

ourselves as the least of it all? 

- The spigot our eternal father

- The drain his ghostly consort

And us, slick as babes,

remembering with heavy liddeds

that which we have not seen:

{

       No, the day has not burned

       innocence to a scab, which 

       now sloughs off

       to a damned somewhere. 

  for I am clean.
       No, I did not smoke in excess

  for I am new.

       I have not traded my goals

       for a scrub brush.

       I am not obsessive

   I am washed without sin.

       I am not disappointed in this skin.

                                                                }

and in this place we look down 

and see that we are greying 

over our bones,

becoming sagged

with each accountable shed

crisp becoming.

and pouring to steam

or to canal

we are thinning. 

we cannot flush our dreams 

with slice by vigorous slice.

they do not bleed by pummice stones

and they will not drown.