The Gift Of The Empty Hand (edit #3)

[ellajam]

><  Akira, I would hug you if I could. By describing your read so well you may have given me the key to this and you've certainly explained what seems to be leading readers off track. Some response below.

Now I am curious--  but let me take a stab and see if I am getting closer:

First, there is an off-hand chance the this is about a parent who died. The eighty years of salvage potentially suggests that, and other than someone very down to earth, or a mendicant or a Buddhist, losing that much stuff would normally get a rise unless the person was older and learned the perspective of age — they are after all, just things. 

Ha, this idea that you've dismissed because the rest misleads you is where I was aiming, and obviously missing.

But, that said, I am going to hold to the couple theory and say She (narrator) He (hoarder) for convenience.

It seems the divergence of views on “things” and life revealed by the loss triggered the questioning of perceived identity and outlook that either terminated the relationship or opened up other things (pun pun, can't resist) that then terminated the relationship, or, in other words, the old “Who the hell are you and what did you do with the person I thought I was living with all these years?”

Not this, but I will sift through to try to eliminate anything that might have led you here.

I am picking up a "If you didn't care about stuff, why the hell have I (we?) spent so much time and energy maintaining your accumulation of it."

LOL, yes to this.

This would be clearer if you were more consistent in whose stuff it is. You assign the first load of crap to him, but the closeted-harbored stuff mostly could belong to either of you.

Ding, ding, ding, this a problem. Now I understand why you suggested a strophe break here, I think the closet moves the location and therefore the poem, goodbye closet and possibly picnic basket, which may have a feminine feel to some and may lead readers down a dead end. A million thanks.

That it is his desire/drive to save the ancient/antique crap could be intensified a touch, and would reinforce

the odd contradiction of the hoarder not caring about the loss, and the person with little care for the stuff while it was there being floored by the loss.

yes this, crazy isn't it?  

Consider maybe adding a descriptive image memory of the experiences of his collecting of the crap to break/ameliorate the list-like nature of S2 that other commentators were bothered by (didn’t bother me too much, but more meaningful images usually can’t hurt).

I think what threw me initially is that the opening suggests a choice: you left all your stuff, which is now is here with me. But the poem then goes to show that it wasn’t left by choice, but destroyed: He didn't leave it (physically) — it was gone, lost at sea. 

The poem is clearly not doing its job here, he left his stuff long before it was destroyed. I will try to do better, thank you for explaining your confusion.

The leaving of the things is clearly metaphorically true for both of them as she is still mentally crushed by it, and he's skipping and humming away.

lol Right on the money.

While I like that idea of the things as a metaphor (and perhaps it is multi-layered, referring also to other aspects of the relationship, though as is the text may currently be a bit thin to properly support such), but the opening line being followed by such a detailed physical list of items throws off the reading, creating that problem I initially had. 

It may even be worth at least playing with the idea of a foreshadowing of the destruction at the start/before the list to clue in the reader that there is something else going on. This is just a crude illustration to make the point, but:

You left without your things.

All lost to the storm:
Eighty years of salvage shelved 
beside Cayce, Twain and Eliot;
issues from the weekly deluge 
of Archeology, New Yorker, Science
and annotated testaments 
the rest of us would never read.
Closets harbor picnic baskets 
and rescued vacuum cleaners;
Polaroid cameras in their striped boxes;
photos of your youth, and ours.

When the ocean took it all
your grin appeared and whispered: 
They're just things.

My arms are full of empty,
free to hold today.