Getting Ready To Sell

The corner shelves in our garage weigh heavy with junk and grime:
stretched bungee cords, mouse bait, caulking tubes both large and small.
Here, through whorls of years we've cast off sandpaper, fading paint,
even, once essential, rusting bolts, their locks,
along with anchor to our long-sold boat, its safety lines.

I find forgotten birthday candles for all those planned celebrations
now past, long gone -- as they sit snug beside extra knobs, their screws.
I leave them -- maybe a need to enter rooms of memories, places,
old thoughts, or even new roots buried deep beneath.

Shards of windowpanes catch quick and flickering light behind
a scrim of screen waiting for that old window through which
we used to look, that spidery window that bugs couldn't forget.
You remember, don't you, that mullioned one we'd check for months
on end, after we witnessed a large grazing herd of deer

staring us down across the pane, perhaps in question of why
we came, who owns the land, when we'll go.
All these things, these cherished thoughts, and I cannot part
with even a thimble in my jumbled sewing box. Best to scoop them up,
I say, hand them to the new visitors round the bend as they, too,
wander through this house they'll soon call home -- for a time.

Take the best, I'll ask, as I extend my arms, blend it with yours
for your stay; savor all the memories --
the deer, the garnet leaves falling fast from bending trees
those blustery days -- the bleats, the rasping cries of sand hill cranes.