Inventory Facilitation

A photographer cataloged all 12,795 items in her house. This is what she found

After going through a divorce and moving home for the 11th time, Barbara Iweins decided to take stock of her life — and everything in it.

Read in CNN: https://apple.news/A8eVueYsEQ_S6VJ5aHGsT9w

Inventory 

By Günter Eich (Translated by Rita Dove)

This is my cap, this is my coat, 

here my shaving things

in a pouch of linen.

Tin can:

my plate, my cup:

in the tin dish 

I’ve scratched my name.

Scratched here with this

precious nail

which I hide from

jealous eyes.

In the bread bag is

a pair of wool socks

and stuff I’ll tell

no one about —

it serves as a pillow

nights for my head.

This cardboard here lies

between me and the earth.

Most of all I love

the lead in the pencil:

it writes poems by day

that I thought up at night.

This is my notebook,

this is my ground sheet,

this is my hand towel,

this is my twine.

The Suitcase

By Reni Fulton

You think I’m crazy with my suitcase packed and ready by the door.

“Ready for what?” you ask me. “Ready for anything.” I tell you.

You don’t understand how it is these days, one minute living a good life,

raising kids, making love to your wife, working at a job you love or hate,

drinking beer and bowling on Friday nights,

living a life that bores you sometimes,

that you regret for reasons that aren’t important sometimes.

I’m telling you the next minute could be different. Life is fragile. 

Everything you are, all that you are known by could be in this one suitcase… 

Ode to Common Things 

by Pablo Neruda

I have a crazy,

crazy love of things.

I like pliers,

and scissors.

I love

cups,

rings,

and bowls –

not to speak, or course,

of hats.

I love

all things,

not just

the grandest,

also

the

infinitely

small –

thimbles,

spurs,

plates,

and flower vases.

Oh yes,

the planet

is sublime!

It’s full of pipes

weaving

hand-held

through tobacco smoke,

and keys

and salt shakers –

everything,

I mean,

that is made

by the hand of man, every little thing:

shapely shoes,

and fabric,

and each new

bloodless birth

of gold,

eyeglasses

carpenter’s nails,

brushes,

clocks, compasses,

coins, and the so-soft

softness of chairs.

Mankind has

built

oh so many

perfect

things!

Built them of wool

and of wood,

of glass and

of rope:

remarkable

tables,

ships, and stairways.

I love all things,

not because they are

passionate

or sweet-smelling

but because,

I don’t know,

because

this ocean is yours,

and mine;

these buttons

and wheels

and little

forgotten

treasures,

fans upon

whose feathers

love has scattered

its blossoms

glasses, knives and

scissors –

all bear

the trace

of someone’s fingers

on their handle or surface,

the trace of a distant hand lost

in the depths of forgetfulness.

I pause in houses,

streets and

elevators

touching things,

identifying objects

that I secretly covet;

this one because it rings,

that one because

it’s as soft

as the softness of a woman’s hip,

that one there for its deep-sea color,

and that one for its velvet feel.

O irrevocable

river

of things:

no one can say

that I loved

only

fish,

or the plants of the jungle and the field,

that I loved

only

those things that leap and climb, desire, and survive.

It’s not true:

many things conspired

to tell me the whole story.

Not only did they touch me,

or my hand touched them:

they were

so close

that they were a part

of my being,

they were so alive with me

that they lived half my life

and will die half my death.

Yard Sale

By Jane Kenyon

Under the stupefying sun

my family’s belongings lie on the lawn

or heaped on borrowed card tables

in the gloom of the garage. Platters,

frying pans, our dead dog’s

dish, box upon box of sheet music,

a wad of my father’s pure linen

hand-rolled handkerchiefs, and his books

on the subsistence farm, a dream

for which his constitution ill suited him.

My niece dips seashells

in a glass of Coke. Sand streaks giddily

between the bubbles to the bottom. Brown runnels

seem to scar her arm. “Do something silly!”

she begs her aunt. Listless,

I put a lampshade on my head.

Not good enough.

My brother takes pity on her

and they go walking together along the river

in places that seemed numinous

when we were five and held hands

with our young parents.

She comes back

triumphant, with a plastic pellet box the size

of a bar of soap, which her father has clipped

to the pouch of her denim overalls. In it,

a snail with a slate-blue shell, and a few

blades of grass to make it feel like home….

Hours pass. We close the metal strongbox

and sit down, stunned by divestiture.

What would he say? My niece

produces drawings and hands them over shyly:

a house with flowers, family

standing shoulder to shoulder

near the door under an affable sun,

and one she calls “Ghost with Long Legs.”

Storage 

By Mary Oliver

When I moved from one house to another

there were many things I had no room

for. What does one do? I rented a storage

space. And filled it. Years passed.

Occasionally I went there and looked in,

but nothing happened, not a single

twinge of the heart.

As I grew older the things I cared

about grew fewer, but were more

important. So one day I undid the lock

and called the trash man. He took

everything.

I felt like the little donkey when

his burden is finally lifted. Things!

Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful

fire! More room in your heart for love,

for the trees! For the birds who own

nothing–the reason they can fly.

A Hundred Objects Close By

By Mirabai

I know a cure for sadness:

Let your hands touch something that

makes your eyes

smile.

I bet there are a hundred objects close by

that can do that.

Look at

beauty’s gift to us –

her power is so great she enlivens

the earth, the sky, our

soul.

New Dog

By Mark Doty

Jimi and Tony

can’t keep Dino,

their cocker spaniel;

Tony’s too sick,

the daily walks

more pressure

than pleasure,

one more obligation

that can’t be met.

And though we already

have a dog, Wally

wants to adopt,

wants something small

and golden to sleep

next to him and

lick his face.

He’s paralyzed now

from the waist down,

whatever’s ruining him

moving upward, and

we don’t know

how much longer

he’ll be able to pet

a dog. How many men

want another attachment,

just as they’re

leaving the world?

Wally sits up nights

and says, I’d like

some lizards, a talking bird,

some fish. A little rat.

So after I drive

to Jimi and Tony’s

in the Village and they

meet me at the door and say,

We can’t go through with it,

we can’t give up our dog,

I drive to the shelter

–just to look–and there

is Beau: bounding and

practically boundless,

one brass concatenation

of tongue and tail,

unmediated energy,

too big, wild,

perfect. He not only

licks Wally’s face

but bathes every

irreplaceable inch

of his head, and though

Wally can no longer

feed himself he can lift

his hand, and bring it

to rest on the rough gilt

flanks when they are,

for a moment, still.

I have never seen a touch

so deliberate. It isn’t about grasping;

the hand itself seems

almost blurred now,

softened, though

tentative only

because so much will

must be summoned,

such attention brought

to the work–which is all

he is now, this gesture

toward the restless splendor,

the unruly, the golden,

the animal, the new.

What We Want

By Linda Pastan

What we want

is never simple.

We move among the things

we thought we wanted:

a face, a room, an open book

and these things bear our names—

now they want us.

But what we want appears

in dreams, wearing disguises.

We fall past,

holding out our arms

and in the morning

our arms ache.

We don’t remember the dream,

but the dream remembers us.

It is there all day

as an animal is there

under the table,

as the stars are there

even in full sun.

The Armful

By Robert Frost

For every parcel I stoop down to seize

I lose some other off my arms and knees,

And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,

Extremes too hard to comprehend at. once

Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.

With all I have to hold with hand and mind

And heart, if need be, I will do my best.

To keep their building balanced at my breast.

I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;

Then sit down in the middle of them all.

I had to drop the armful in the road

And try to stack them in a better load.

In Black Water Woods (Excerpt)

By Mary Oliver

…To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it

go,

to let it go.

Inventory

By Dorothy Parker

Four be the things I am wiser to know:

Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I’d been better without:

Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:

Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:

Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

Bottles

By Jane Kenyon

Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin, 

Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax, 

Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft. 

The coated ones smell sweet or have 

no smell; the powdery ones smell 

like the chemistry lab at school 

that made me hold my breath.

Marks

By Linda Pastan

My husband gives me an A

for last night’s supper,

an incomplete for my ironing,

a B plus in bed.

My son says I am average,

an average mother, but if

I put my mind to it

I could improve.

My daughter believes

in Pass/Fail and tells me

I pass. Wait til’ they learn

I’m dropping out.