I was lighting
the stove for tea
this morning.
Match-head broke off
with bright red
in its gray.
Fell on the newspaper:
black-white turned to
all sorts of color;
started flaming, then
ashing away...
Which would have been
fine, if it had been one on the table,
not one on a stack—
Sunday Times, magazines—
the closest pile, with
a horde behind it:
each taller, yellower,
longer unseen
(less touched,
more permanent,
the further down
they go).
I threw water—
so exciting, I had to
catch my breath, remembering
child-hood; the fresh income of play—
on Everything: years of “To-do”
with
nothing done, except shift and reorganize
the tops on piles
that never got smaller,
and weighed.
That little fire
made the. dent
I never would.
(Always was
a good frugal boy,
but in
that
instant...
“God! I am done
saving! I am done
owning! I am done
being for these things
of mine! I am not my
rubble's keeper; I want
no stores built up for me
in heaven. Just this skin.”
).
So I began: Not to sort,
nor to pack. No labels, no
values, no 'saving' pile;
just one type of thing,
in one direction:
rubbish.
*
My stores got smaller,
smaller; my space
bigger, bigger.
Until I was all.
