February is a good time for sorting through and throwing out and for facing the last traces of Christmas hurriedly hidden in some obscure corner. The process inevitably brings a surprise or two.

I opened the door to the closet where I keep boxes
and I couldn’t get my toes inside.

The boxes, it seemed, were holding a convention
(probably about overpopulation)
and several had taken the floor already.

Most of them were wearing black printed tape
from the online retailer where I buy
herb tea and calcium, books and printer ink,

and those electronic devices that annoy rabbits
until the hares discover by sitting still
they can blissfully munch all the grass they want.

Other boxes sported labels from makers I barely recall,
except for the ones from my favorite shoe seller,
which were keeping to themselves in a stack in the corner.

The gathering embraced diversity not in color but in size,
accepting the tall and narrow, the short and broad,
the deep, flat, cubic, medium and small.

All that was required:
be physically fit to travel again,
to carry treasures undetermined to places yet unnamed.

Scanning the closet, my inner cynic smiled —
the convention assured it that
my children won’t move away to where
someone else hands them the gifts I tie with satin ribbon.

I closed the door firmly, and those waiting to enter
were promptly ushered to the recycle bin,
for even standing room only no longer applied.

A sobering thought: It takes more than one trillion square feet of corrugated cardboard to meet the world’s demand for sturdy boxes each year. Fortunately, recycling contributes about half the material needed for the average box.
(from corrugated.org and planetpaper.com)