Poignancy of the discarded.
The armless doll that stares
from the trash heap in spring,
the sagging sofa with the cat-scratched arms,
the love-stained mattress in the rain.
Inside-out umbrellas, broken-ribbed,
flapping forlornly in puddles,
and jack-o’-lanterns after Halloween,
askew on compost piles.
Poignancy even of the intact, discarded:
here, today, curbside by the corner post
(among junked chairs and rust-stained mops)
a perfectly good birdcage
with all the fittings: porcelain cups
for seed and water,
ladders, mirrors—all the bells
and whistles—everything
but the bird.
This appeared in the November 2013 issue.
Robyn Sarah's memoir, Music, Late and Soon appeared in 2021 Her collection, My Shoes Are Killing Me, won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2015. She lives in Montreal.
