This is the year of sorting,
of throwing out, of giving back,
of sifting through the heaps, the piles,
the drifts, the dunes, the sediments,
or less poetically, the shelves, the trunks,
the closets, boxes, corners
in the cellar, nooks and cupboards–
the junk, in other words,
that’s blown in here, or else been saved,
or else has eddied, or been thrown
my way by unseen waves.
For instance: two thick layers
of blank glass jars that once held jam
we made in those evaporated
summers; a frugal slew
of plastic bags; a cracked maroon umbrella
so prized when new;
a chocolate box with crayon ends
stored up for phantom children;
shoes with the grimy marks
of toes that were once mine.
Photos of boys whose names are lost
(posing so jauntily in front of chrome–
trimmed cars), many of them
dead now, the others old–
everything speckled and faded, jumbled
together like– let’s say– this bowl
of miscellaneous pebbles gathered
time after time on beaches now
eroded or misplaced, but scooped up then
and fingered for their beauty,
and pocketed, space-time crystals
lifted from once indelible days.
No comments:
Post a Comment