Friday, September 05, 2003

Pastiche

A sense of letting go
unowing
resurfacing my past in all its
surplussage and wastefulness
box after dusty cardboard box
This one’s got ten years of banking
going back so far it’s like
a fiscal Olduvai, recording
lives once lived and since, repressed:
crises, parties, poverties,
so many choices every day
each minute full as they are now
reality was likewise dense
and I was fretful, poor of spirit,
callow, prideful, heedless, weak -
this box is all our household records
three year’s worth and twelve years old
I smell the tension in the paper
filed compulsively, forgotten,
blinking in the light of day
I read my failings in my checkbook
trace my lifeline through my archives
handle every sheet and staple
drop them though the narrow slot
and hear the engine whir as tinsel
fills the bin beneath the rotors
the sound of history erasing
triumphs, tragedies alike
and with each bag of shredded paper
each old box that I dispose of
I regain that share of spirit
feel my archived energy
returning to me, rather musty,
needing some reintegration
nonetheless a prodigal
homecoming of recycled mojo

Having hauled the bags of shred
downstairs to bins two flights below
I run back up at doublespeed
and take the steps two at a time
triumphant in rejuvenation