Good morning! We’ll call you Get Started.

Round and round, each finger bathed in suds,

Warm water, hand towel, soapy cream.

The day begins and you are clean.

Next we have Touched the Cutting Board.

Too bad, but no time for chatter.

Must wash away that inscrutable matter!

Frothy focus on two fingers of

Reprobate right hand,

Green soap lathers in chastisement,

Rough as sand.

Midday, it’s What About those Gloves?

They touched doorknobs, mailboxes,

Mulched in coat pockets,

Hands swathed in absorbent wool.

Time for lively soaping, rinsing, palms slapping

Now becoming raw and chapping.

Angrily, near sunset, we’ll name you Hogwash.

Washing and wringing to a muttered cuss,

“How can we be hurt by what we can’t see?” and

“How can the merest slip of a fingernail

House a monster?” and

“Why has this happened to us, to me?”

Nighttime at the sink, we’ll call it

Rethinking the Last Hour, glancing at

The innocuous grocery bag

That was who-knows-where

Handled by who-knows-who

Lousy with who-knows-what

Before it settled here,

Now empty and gaping,

Its open mouth bagging fear.

Now-I-lay-me-down bedtime wash, finally

We’ll call this one

Just for the Hell of It.

Skillful, slippery, nearly automatic,

Hands massage and comfort each other

Empathic and emphatic.

Through these grim rituals

We spend our days in fear

As soap and water force us here.

I wrote this poem early in the pandemic, when the focus was not on masks or vaccines, but handwashing. It’s a memory we can all share from multiple washes per day, until our hands got chapped and sore.

I live in Evanston and I’m an older white woman who graduated from Dawes, Haven, and ETHS – totally home grown and living in my home place.