Poetry

A Silk Lined Box

by

David Flynn

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 hand-made wooden box.
Lined in crumpled, purple silk,
like an upmarket coffin.
A box with a secret.

A grey plastic monument
with a vinyl house 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.