For every parcel I stoop down to seize
 I lose some other off my arms and knees,
 And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns
 Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
 Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
 With all I have to hold with hand and mind
 And heart, if need be, I will do my best
 To keep their building balanced at my breast.
 I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
 Then sit down in the middle of them all.
 I had to drop the armful in the road
 And try to stack them in a better load.

Something Genevieve Aquino said about packing and putting things away¹ reminded me of this quiet gem by Robert Frost:

A graceful, calm poem about clumsy, inadequate but all too human attempts at gathering and keeping everything that matters. As I grow older and watch others a generation older than me fade into their sunset years, I realise unhappily that neither the human mind nor heart really have all the space we imagine (and hope) they do. But if there is indeed a way of stacking memory and other love-tinsel in “better load”, would that I learn it one day!

— Pavithra Sankaran

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/minstrels/message/2018