Poem by Bill Perrault

Photo by Bill Perrault

Clutter
July 17 & 18, 2004

It’s amazing how clutter accumulates
When you don’t clean.
When you don’t weed your garden
The weeds grow all over
It may even kill your plants
Debris, left overs, dust, scrap, butts, the dead
You say to yourself, “I’ll do it tomorrow”
It’s stuffed away and piles up
In the closet, in the mind, in the junk room
As they say, “Let’s put this aside for now”
But now never comes
It is never done
Forgotten in the mind’s eye
As the years pass by, it gets worse
We have good intentions
We really want to do these wonderful things
That need to be done
But now never comes
Some of us leave it to be done by our children
But what do they do
They just throw it away as if it never existed
Why cling and keep things to do later
Piled high to the sky in my brain, in my attic, in my cluttering room
Antiques are never used because they are precious gems
My mother never used her best china
When she died, we took it out of the barrel
It was neatly placed so carefully in decades ago
And the whole set crumbled to dust
At the end of your life sometimes you start doing
What should have been done years ago
But it’s too late, it’s time to die
All your dreams and ideas die with you
You don’t have the time to tell your children
But they don’t care, anyway

Letting go of what we want is the problem
Just do it, let it go, throw it away
Put it in the garbage with a ceremony
With a little sage for the smell
The dumps will gladly accept it all
That’s what dumps do
Give me your crap and I will embrace it for you
Don’t you know that once we let go, we are free
Letting go is the key to freedom
When your kingdom is empty, you are released
Filling your soul only makes you grow old, angry
Resentful, nervous, restless, and irritable
It’s so nice to have nothing to think about
Nothing to do, nothing to schedule
Just being fresh and clean for one day
Let it all go down the drain
Where it belongs and it’s all over
Kaput