In the Graveyard of Major Appliances

by David Wagoner

Among the boxcar wheels and the flattened cars,
up against the jungles of rusty pipes
and the cat’s cradles of re-bars, they look outstanding
in the steel mill scrap yard under the slow rain.

They are its only whiteness—refrigerators,
stoves, washers, driers, and thawed freezers.

They’ve been let go by housekeepers and cooks,
husbands and homemakers, but still maintain
their centers of power. Most have stayed upright.
The few that landed askew look stoic about it.

Though they’re no longer making anything
hotter, colder, or cleaner, or being urged
to disobey the laws of thermodynamics
while running temperatures, this isn’t the end.
They wait for the same old furnace and resurrection.