Old Poem, #1
I don’t write a lot of poetry these days. It’s always come in waves and been more about processing the world around me than pursuing Poet as a personal title.
But some of the things I’ve written over the years deserve to be read, so I’ll post them now and then. Here’s the first.
Another Move
There are boxes of empty CD jewel cases
Mix tapes recorded during the ‘90s
Cat fur stuck to multiple layers of clear packing tape
The sole remains of precious
Surrogate children
The boxes are coated in thick black marker
One label scratched out for another
Re-use of a cardboard box
Recycling before it was cool to recycle
Dust mites have played rounds of golf and croquet
And danced tangos and whatever else dust mites do
In and on top of these boxes
Now becoming empty as I finally
Hesitantly
Place items into the trash.
The boxes have begun to degrade
No longer fit for re-use
For another move
Maybe down the street
Across the dividing line between the decent neighborhood
And the less decent neighborhood
“The other side of the tracks”
He told me, the first landlord I met
Two years ago
A young black man whom I always thought
I’d see again
I thought I would stay here longer
He walked me to this house where I now live
With my boxes still filled with unused items
From a previous life
He saw the Queen Anne Victorian house and said
“Yeah, I’ve lost this one, I know.”
He knew because I am a white woman
In a diverse neighborhood and this house suits me
His apartment was nicely renovated
But small and on the other side of the tracks
Where I will now go
Alone
And I will be fine
Because I know
That people are just people
That they too accumulate things they never use
Maybe they have tufts of cat fur stuck in the carpet
In between the cushions of a couch
A cat long gone
Pieces of past lives
Home to dust mites
Dancing and playing sports
Holding them back.
– Pamela Weis, 10/20/2010