What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
I think possessions own us
And not the other way.
We‘re desperate to protect what’s ours
And, if we can, get more.
They say if you’d be perfect
You should give it all away.
The secret of eternal life
Is to sell it for the poor.
It’s not a sermon preached much
We all know the score.
Possessions mean too much to us.
We can not let them go.
We‘re happy to say ‘freedom’
Means nothing left to lose
But these are empty words because
It’s never what we choose.
Sadly it can happen
And it all gets ripped away
But hand on your heart
Can you truly say
It wouldn’t get to you.
I think that you’d be consumed still
By all the things you’d lost
Could you simply walk away
Or would they still own you?
I think there’d be a period
You’d simply be in shock.
Robbed of our possessions
What is left of us?
We‘re ruled by our possessions
They tell us who we are
Or sometimes when we cling to things
Remind us who we were.
The truth is that the less you have
The less there is to lose.
Imagine being super rich
Perhaps they live in fear.
Where to park their luxury car
Safely berth their yacht
Stash away their jewellery
Protect what they have got?
Once I had a fantasy
Of never owning much
What goes in a rucksack
And that would be enough.
It’s sadly not realistic
We all know that it’s not.
There’s always reasons we want more
We never have enough.
I find indeed I still cling on
To stuff I do not need.
For what I have is who I am
And I can’t let it go.
Andrew Green's Poems 