Cleaning (poem by Cynthia Ciani Anderson, style: 1960s)

Cleaning (poem by Cynthia Ciani Anderson, style: 1960s)
The spots on the floor call to me, the dust
on the clivia leaves, the dark grit that gathers
in the corners of the bathroom tiles.
I count the silverware in the kitchen drawer-one soup
spoon, one dinner fork missing, one extra dessert fork-
peel out the rubber gasket in the plastic lid
of the square glass storage jar, wash off
the mold on the rubber strip, fit it all back together
with a twinge of satisfaction,
use damp Q-tips to clean the trim
on the kitchen drawer fronts.
I always fold towels the same way-end to end, repeat, fold
the resulting rectangle in half, focused on making the
corners match-the way I learned from my best friend,
Nancy Goldstein, when we were ten.
I rely on my husband to disassemble and clean the drains.
He appreciates my cleaning and regularly tells me so.
I ask him if he thinks there's something wrong
that I enjoy cleaning as much as I do. He doesn't.
I wonder though-there are so many things in life you can't
make right.