Visions at the Laundrymat

Saturday at the Laundromat, my favorite chore; I gaze round the room, people watching
The Mexican migrants with their brushcuts, quiet ways, and tinted windows
A mom and daughter folding their warm clothes, the mom but a child herself
The young woman in her twenties, approaching obesity, her face in a book
A couple young guys in Bermuda shorts in spite of the snow outside, talking football
Perpetual puddles eating away at the floor tiles, the scar faced change machine that
vandals attempted to violate, the droning of the clothes extractor The
squeaking of an occasional cycle-change of a washer, and the endless clinking of quarters
dropping into machines that appear to be ancient. What used to take two quarters
now takes fourteen.