First published in 2001 in As the Hand, the Glove, Lost and Found is a poem about waste, sustainability and recycling – and about the gifts given to us by those who came before. It was prompted by my late father’s habit of accumulating all kinds of things, in case they might someday come in useful – going so far as to head out in the early evenings to the car part at the back of our house, to gather up the plastic and cardboard cups his fellow townsfolk had thrown away.