Throwing away clogged chests of keepsakes,
Raking out cluttered drawers of dead objects
Including a plastic modeled ’57 Cadillac
In a faded blue hobby shop box,
Wondering why I hoarded all this lifeless stuff
Forsaking cobwebbed, dusty dead things
A colorful but broken beaded neck chain
From where—my mission on the Cheyenne Reservation
Or maybe a childhood week at Nemaha Baptist Camp?
Folders of impersonal letters and receipts
Depleting musty cabinets of shrouded sheets
Showing our past giving to outreach and missions
A gray-scaled photo of World Vision’s child,
Srongkeit who grew to manhood far long ago;
Cleaning out grubby shelves of faded news magazines,
Endless bookcases dead full for too many years;
I thunk-drop foldered objects into the recycle bin
They clutter down to a grayed bottom
Falling from our noisy lessening lives,
Me no longer trying to save our past.
Last, but certainly vaguest of gagged all,
Reluctantly letting go of deceased beliefs
Tightly held doctrines so for wanted shelter
But now proven wrong, my impacted mind
I break open; beliefs slip-slide down, sinking to oblivion;
From my upturned minded tumbler, mental mug.
And finally, too, my senses, gut, left leg, skin and joints
Cycle down unwilling objects soon to be forsaken
Yet trying to hold identity from its final demise
The inevitable forsaken descending into the cosmic ‘has bin’
Of former living; billions gone; nothing ever lasts—
Except for
Goodness
Sake
--Dan Wilcox
First published in Word Catalyst Magazine
