I have learned nothing

I have learned nothing from my years on earth.
No lessons guide me away from mistakes which
accumulate like outgrown but not discarded clothes:

dirty linen locked in a series of trunks
carried on my back from town to town.
I have lost the keys, if I ever had them.

I could discard the trunks, leave them behind.
Instead, in some stubborn grasping
I keep vigil over them,

thinking they will reveal the answers,
thinking the past has some significance
that will lend depth to the present moment,
that will explain it all, point me to the way.