What Stays
A garbage bag, an overstuffed closet:
What goes? What stays?
Decisions flicker through the mind
Like bits of sunlight on unsettled water.
This can go, the broken and breaking.
This too, the useless and unwieldy.
In any process of elimination,
The first choices are the easiest.
The sifting becomes thornier
When encountering objects you have
Not seen in months, a year—
This one, a gift that was not quite right
From a person you love.
Maybe this person is gone.
An article of clothing that no longer fits,
But you wish you could wear
Again, and inhabit its confidence, charm,
Innocence, etcetera. The bag is in your hand.
It crackles, a sparking fire. Accept
This triage, subjective, uncertain.
ooh nice. i like the surprise "again" at the start of the last stanza.
ReplyDeleteyeah i've been there. i'm still there. the problem was compounded in my life when we bought our house.
it came with a shed. a purge-deferring shed.
Great rumination on cleaning/cleansing. The crackling bag becoming fire is very nice.
ReplyDeleteSorry about all the comments at once; my vacation upset my regular keeping-up with things, and I keep being unable to resist commenting.
ReplyDeleteThis poem really speaks to me, which I suppose is me admitting I am somewhat of a packrat. I love idea of it being a triage. I want that to be the title of the poem, actually. Or to have come up with that myself. haha