Bearing
It’s the background sound, track that plays
all day between blue jeans and boxer shorts.
Drop another load of whites, move the darks
and it starts, grinding metal on metal deep
in the machine, out of sight, over and over.
It turns with the drum, changing tune,
sometimes soft or adding a rest,
but always, always repeating, piercing,
until you don’t hear the noise
and at the same time hear nothing but.
Sounds like a bearing’s going bad,
the serviceman says, but he’s just here
to empty loose coins from the washer pump,
indifferent to the scraping, shrieking
no one can really stand
and no one really minds.
Yes, he could fix it, he supposed,
but may as well bear with
until it gives way.
Won’t ruin anything, after all, he said,
that’s not already broken. I’ll bet
you hardly notice anymore.
I sit on a hard chair at my kitchen table,
stare across dullness, a scuffed floor
to the laundry and count
how many days we might wear
the same socks and t-shirts.
That’s when I know–
some day, the dryer is going
to have to break.
—Will Willingham
Used by permission of Tweetspeak Poetry. “Bearing” was featured in the Ordinary Genius book club. Photo by Aaron Burden, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.
"how many days we might wear
the same socks and t-shirts"