Ephemera is what we are, <br />from our tea chest high arrival <br />over the stumbling streets <br />to our slow blanching in this sunlit window. <br /> <br />Flies try our surfaces with their sticky feet, <br />dust quilts our blind eyes <br />until the shopkeeper's feather flick <br />opens them again <br />to the equable shouldering of our fellows. <br /> <br />Why don't they pick us out, <br />those who maunder past, <br />or even stop, grow bug-eyed, <br />butt their hands against the glass <br />leaving moon marks? <br /> <br />We are shinier, or rarer, <br />less breakable, more limited <br />as an edition; with some trick <br />or shape, or colour; <br />memories of childhood visits, <br />toffees rolled in the mouth, <br />an old back kitchen kettle singing. <br /> <br />No, the hours go. <br />Trees in Lincoln's Inn Fields dress <br />and undress, fog chokes <br />and unchokes bridges, <br />ships whisper rust, <br /> <br />and here I stand <br />in this September evening, <br />an old curiosity in the making, <br />peering through this shop mesh <br />to where these bibelots <br />who have outlived their lovers <br />wait, and wait.<br /><br />Ian Nicholas McDowell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ephemera-7/
