Cleaning The Refrigerator

Cleaning the refrigerator
in the country house
Is like some perverse exercise
in something the opposite of archeology;
In yellow rubber gloves and with
Lysol cloths
I erase the ketchupy finger prints
of a brother-in-law, 4 years past,
some short black hairs from Spikeword,
the German shepard who shared my wife's bed,
2 years before me
and crayon marks from my 3 year old niece
(who's now nearly 17).
"Powerful Cleaner- No Bleach Harshness" reads the blue and white canister, but
what it fails to warn me of
are the myriad other ways
in which
the harshness of a clean refrigerator
might be felt.