Bags

Bags

Black plastic sacks, bin-liner packs,

Flapping, slapping in the bitter breeze,

Stacked untidily, racked at random,

Tops un-tied, flopping open,

Revealing random contents,

Overflowing innards,

Blowing about in the wind.

A growing contribution,

Spilling out on to the pavement,

Filling up this rented doorway.

People step around

This rubbish on the ground

A nocturnal delivery,

Secretly unloaded overnight,

No ceremony in this 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,

In the charity shop,

Making useful profit

From this seeming careless, casual drop.

Is this all there is to show?

Are these the collected works,

The prized possessions,

The sum total of a life,

Gathered together,

Then placed here by a grieving wife?

Cherished memories carefully put aside,

Assembled, valued, sorted, sifted,

Into different piles,

With generous motivation,

And charitable intention?

Or the results of a hurried clearance?

Out of sight, out of mind,

A rapid sweeping together

Of unwanted things that meant a lot

To someone once?

Of unbearable reminders

With their odours and associations

That can no longer be endured?

To a doorway closer than the dump,

Reception facility open throughout the night,

A problem easily offloaded,

Without any questions asked,

Is it finally all reduced to this?

 Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2013