I am an inveterate accumulator of junk, much to the distress of my family! In celebrating that, I wrote the following poem:
Have you ever looked for an old letter or a photograph
in the junk accumulated over the years?
possessions once cherished and stored with care;
dusty, old paperbacks coming apart in the seams
visiting cards, you kept after a long-sought meeting;
conference bags, black, blue, in cloth and nylon
coins collected in the years of wandering
pound notes with the queen with her Mona Lisa smile
children’s drawings which had evoked exclamations
of parental pride, preserved in brown envelopes
you, dark haired and confident in family photographs
your wife in that tight kameez once thought a la mode
sepia now with age and the old gleam gone
a colour set with ink dried, rusty keys to forgotten doors
After a while you forget what started you on this
and start enjoying touching and feeling the past
preserved in old boxes tied with shoe laces
as you find everything except what you were looking for.
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