clearing out the essentials

My wife began the day
with an ominous word:
“Okay—”
More than the word
it’s the pause;
I hear thunder in the
furniture and lightning
in the shelves
and if the elves can’t
handle this,
we’ll do it by ourselves—
these things I know,
don’t ask me how.

I put her off
by telling her
I hadn’t had my food
nor even yet my shower
and shave
to mellow out my mood.
She smiled and paused
and, that abated,
hummed while I
pursued those things
and she extremely waited.

I soon discovered
that the task
on which she’d set
her heart
was to purge
my storage shelves
and the yellowed words
once my art.

Most of it
I soon found out
was pages I had clipped,
whole newspapers
and articles
that might have sparked my wit
and magazines and flyers
coupons, warranties
and pages of instructions
for ancient players of VHS
cassettes and DVDs.

We tossed a cardboard carton full
and a couple of garbage bags
and all the time I wondered why
I’d kept this heritage

Which leads me to this simple thing:
the shelves are almost empty
next time I want to save some stuff
I’ll send it to the dumpy.