His loft is tidy in places

in others, dark, dirty, disarranged.

There is treasure in the dust,

buried treasure, buried seeds,

longings, loves, lingering echoes

of lost life in the filtered light.

The hopes, the work,

craziness that didn’t work.

His grandfather’s radio

that will never work again.

He accuses himself of sentiment

and pleads guilty.

 

And there is Christmas,

lurking so brightly in dark boxes,

in a gloomy, cobwebby corner,

waiting to burst forth with colour and joy.

 

His mind is like his loft.

From time to time he sighs

over memories, past glories and lost hopes.

But sometimes

he blows dust off the things of youth.