Cleaning Day

The drawers are old.
The paint is faded.
Drips of old paint and stain drip down the drawer fronts,
hardened with age.

Some of them are full.
There are tools and half-finished projects,
and bothersome things, ugly things
stashed out of sight
in hopes perhaps that they will disappear
and make room for more tragedies
that need to be hidden away.

But not today.
Today there is no hiding.
It is cleaning day,
and you will face the broken things and decide
which are fixable,
and which you can finally admit are useless,
or worse,
toxic.

The cleaning will not change the drawers.
They will still be marked and worn.
But it will change you.
And there will be empty space,
waiting places, free of burdens,
easily opened, and
easily closed.

About this poem

We all have things stuffed away. Now and again, it is good to let them out.

The photograph of the drawers was taken at the wood shop at Hancock Shaker Villiage.

Tom