A Silk Lined Box

Special events like birthdays and holidays.
Merry Christmas, and here's another year
To celebrate age and ignorance.
Fifty-two weeks.
A garbage-can clock - recycling time.
Out with the old
For collection day.

Days into weeks,
Weeks into months.
The precious things are saved
In a simple wooden box.
Lined in crumpled purple silk,
Like an upmarket coffin.
A box with a secret.

A grey plastic monument
With my number on the front.
And the occasional treasure inside
That I forced myself to part with.
Dragged through the gate
And left in the rain,
On the smooth tarmac pavement.

Wasted Seconds and Worthless Years

Wakeful nights
and daydream days.

A fragment of a tired memory
I thought I'd lost years ago.
Memories change through time.


I hear the words
I need to hear, and think.

What you say
And what you mean,
Are languages apart.


It lives behind the words,
Beyond the thoughts.


Like noises
Between the species,
That happen to connect.


For all the words
Going back and forth.

I'm out of tune.
The noise I make
Is like the tide going out.


So time is precious,
Existence is fleeting.

The wasted seconds
And the worthless years,
Seem important now.

Ephemeral Ephemera

The books,
The papers,
The journals - well, magazines!
The letters,
The bills,
Old calendars,
Catalogues,
Junk mail?
Photographs
And paper memories.
Cardboard reminders.

They seemed important then,
So I kept them to remember.

                                                                                                � David Flynn

Loch Raven Review Spring 2006 — Vol. 2, No. 1
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