Oxfam Find Poem by Richard G Berg

Oxfam find
Simple stuff
Whitman's Leaves of Grass,
A charitable purchase
Revealing, enough:

'Alex Sales Friday F4603
1 items'

And, in the end:

'No change'.

An alphanumerical chest
For statistics' hunters
Data divers
For stats-and-facts that
Don't add up.

Convict inmate raffle ticket
Holder barcode bearer
Tag or stock code
The numbing jumble.

This timed imprint
The measure of things
Things that must
Be measured. Alex contained
In little letters
On a glossy white patch.

No space
For Alex shaping up
No space
For Whitman singing
Of himself or others.

Residue or reminder of
Costs unknown and change denied
Records stashed
In recycle bins
Anonymous accounts of where we were
And when we were and what we sought
Though not of why we were or why we bought

Unaccounted seasons of statements
At petrol pumps coffee shops check-out tills
Scrolls of simple proof
Reaching neither ground nor roof.

The things we count are hard
To bear: friendships bought and spent
Loves requited, reckoned, rent
Sex expended, shame soon bent
Timeless scraps of boredom lost
Amid the human race
Noted somewhere

Finally receipted
On the fading face.


Richard G Berg
June 2019