'Pop' learned, I suspect, even before the Great Depression <br />To fold his toilet paper with precision <br />Pepsi bottles were saved for the ritual return of their deposit <br />Beer cans were retrieved from manicuered lawns on the walk to Mass <br />When the cans lacked the blessing of a redemptive god called money <br />During that time there was very little waste amid the extravagance <br />Of what my young therapist referred to as the shiredom. <br />The waste thing has something to do <br />With the fact that they were a community of Puritans <br />Who held a vision of a very cosmopolitan Christ <br />Whose face was understood not in the visage <br />of great Rembrandt's work <br />But in the eyes of the youth they loved, disciplined and understood.<br /><br />Bill Grace<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/poem-of-pure-autobiography-depression-dad/
