Anniversary
The dresser,
Twinkling with strings of light,
Is this home’s shrine.
China platters,
Chipped with history,
Range on shelves,
Dangling
With jugs and sauce-boats,
Garnered from charity sales;
They nurse patterns of lost fashions,
Once vibrant hues
Now beautifully muted
By crazed glazing.
Mis-matched candlesticks host
Goblins of cooled wax,
Begat on summer-nights
When gently rattling glass and ice
Cheers company.
Cards from past occasions
And invitations, long-honoured,
Are sheaved, inter-leaved
With snaps of family:
A harvest of conviviality.
Here, the clutter of fleet lives:
(A key, a button, paltry coins,
A scribbled note to self)
Finds rest.
The dresser is a palimpsest
Of gathered lives
Entwined.
Imagine
A silver fruit-bowl centred here
This quarter-century,
Drawing reflection
To its convex curves:
A coffer of images absorbed.
To slide inside its bright patina
Would be to ride once more
The carousel of marriage.
Today, the silver has been burnished.
All tarnish
Rubbed to shine,
The better to see,
In this argent vessel,
Not just a suite of memories
But dreams,
Still to be kindled,
There gleaming. DNM April 2019