To Those Who Love Garage Sales

When you get the morning paper
        And begin to plan your caper
                And you think of all the people you will meet,
When you try in vain to find
        The maps you've left behind
                So that you can chart each and every street,

Will you ever really know the strain,
        How the energy did drain
                From the folks who provided you this treat?
Will you ever know the thought
        That goes with what you bought
                By those strangers who are trying to be sweet?

For until you've tried to do it,
        Until you have yourself gone through it,
                You can never know the work that is behind it.
How each item that you handle
        Be it a trinket, toy or candle
                Has a story all its own before you did find it.

The stuff that you may call junk
        We have kept in our old trunk
                And we never thought that it would ever be
That we would put up each item,
        That people would weigh, scratch or bite them
                As they try to get them cheeper, don't you see?

You will never know that what you bought
        Was a part of life and the lessons it taught            
                Nor any of our emotional pain.
How we made the signs you saw,
        To the paper made the call,
                And prayed, "Dear God, Don't let it rain!"

G.H. Van Sandt, 10/9/99
gvs@idt.net