On Inventory

"Remember me, remember me, but ah!
Forget my fate..."
~ "Dido's Lament: When I Am Laid in Earth" 

I look around and there's still so much I need 
to put in garbage bags, sort for the thrift 
shop, fold for another season beyond 

this one. And at the tail end of summer, 
one length of fence began to sag, as things 
will do after many years, waterlogged.

I think about the times I feel like giving 
up, giving in: just like the shore's ragged hem 
to the sea's steady encroaching. But then I come 

for instance upon a book of tickets or an old 
silk dress, its print of ferns and split leaf 
philodendra now muted green and yellow— 

I think I wore it last walking around 
Philadelphia in the heat, going from museum
to museum, then sitting under the shade 

while someone snapped a picture. There
in the backdrop, a mural on a trattoria wall: 
its giant scale making small impressions 

of our figures. Years later, always 
years later— wonder of wonders, this 
register: the pulse that beats 

its undertone of regret, meaning 
there's something yet, apparently, 
that it desires. And so on, down 

the changing inventory of days: 
we count and carry, buy or trade, set 
aside what we imagine others might want 

after we've passed on, or just gone past 
the need for more possessions. Sometimes, 
too, they've not even once been used.