Bags

Bags

Black plastic sacks, bin-liner packs

Flapping, slapping in the bitter breeze

Stacked untidily, racked at random

Untied tops flopping open

Dropping random contents

Blowing about in the wind

A growing contribution

Revealing overflowing innards

Spilling like guts onto the pavement

Filling up this rank and rented doorway

People step around such rubbish on the ground

A nocturnal delivery secretly unloaded

Un-booted under cover of darkness

No ceremony in its disposal

Dumped like a dead body for someone else to find

To pick up and pick over

To carefully sort, and store and show

Hoping to sell for trifling sums

Making useful profit in the charity shop

From this seeming careless drop

And is this all there is to show?

Are these the careful collected works

The years of prized possessions

The sum total of a life gathered together

Then placed here by a grieving spouse?

Cherished memories thoughtfully put aside

Assembled, valued, sorted, sifted into different piles

Delivered with generous motivation

And charitable intention?

Or else the results of a hurried clearance?

To a doorway closer than the dump

An all-night reception for recycling

A problem easily offloaded, no questions asked

Out of sight, out of mind

A rapid sweeping together

Of unwanted things that meant a lot

To someone once

Or unbearable reminders

With their odours and associations

That can no longer be endured?

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2018