habits of repetition

a found poem

By the time I worked out
the style of our death
the leaves were back on the trees

The journey in search of rubbish
had taken the whole winter long
and now I was here with the bins

The evening it was all over
I emptied the latest rubbish
onto some newspapers spread out
on the kitchen floor:

A cornflakes packet
Old razor blades
Apple cores and cotton buds

Looking through the stuff
I felt how secret the story had been

I’d gone looking for the end
but had always been brought back to this

the rubbish on the floor
appearing grave and autobiographical

The seasons are like that
and so is our trash:

you examine their habits of repetition
for long enough
and you begin to think of lost time


Found in the Things We Throw Away by Andrew O'Hagen in the 24 May issue of the London Review of Books