Domestic Time Travellers

sheets and towels, sheets and towels are our teachers
closed-mouthed, their wisdom is not in words
they are immortal, or at least have lifespans
comparable to Bowhead Whales, Greenland Sharks
Galapagos Tortoises and Koi Fish, no one hunts them
for sport or delicacy or scientific research, no one
throws them away, no one thinks about them, they just
sit there, folded into the cupboard, waiting to be useful
guiltless and guileless and without a single prayer
they live on, long after the indignity of our sleeps
and showers, long after the lineage of our illusions
is extinct, enduring in the linen closet like eremites
on retreat, from such reticent sages generations
may learn how time is woven into the company of silence