Accumulation - Sept 22 2021`

 

Accumulation

Sept 22 2021

I'm told that even plastic doesn't last.

That it keeps on gassing off,

bleeding into the air

like a prairie pond in drought.

Even after

the carpet stops fuming

that new car smell is gone.

It must have been the sun

that turned the old blinds brittle

and apparently thinner,

imperceptibly yellowing

day after day

in its powerful light.

All the plastic in our lives

starting to die

the moment it's created.

Nothing lasts, it seems,

even indestructible plastic.

Even though they say it persists

as if immortal,

in vast Pacific gyres

and every of handful of soil.

Even though it will circle

long after our own brief lives

and of our distant descendants

will also have vaporized

and decomposed.

Yet I save.

Photos, poems

sentimental objects,

even threadbare clothes

I can't bear to part with.

All of it transient.

Except for gold, that is

which will outlast us all,

made in the heart of exploding stars

in a final act

of creative destruction.

But what else can one do?

Time for us moves slowly,

and for most of of it

we, too, are immortal.

A comforting delusion

we only see through when we're old.

Sp perhaps less is more.

Only as much

as you can carry on your back

keep track of on your fingers.

Good enough

that it accompanies us

on our short but wondrous journey.

Another poem on mortality, but with what I hope is a different and less morbid twist. It began where it begins, cutting down the header on an old blind to make it squeeze into a new spot: what presumably began as supple translucent plastic had turned into this brittle yellow stuff that instead of cutting smoothly, tended to shatter into pointy little shards. I couldn't help but think: “this is the stuff they say will last forever?”

The final stanza is true in two senses. First, less almost always is more. Especially in the context of a culture of consumption where we are all accumulating more and more useless junk. And second, this truth is so clearly manifest with age, when we realize that we can't take it with us; that little of it provides meaning or lasting pleasure; and that it has become a burden at a time we want to simplify our lives and prioritize what's important.