Fragments And Reflections

Things In A Skip

He came as requested, bringing his skip,

with a gentle smile and strong limbs,

brown with wind and sun, though 

stiffer than perhaps a while ago, the years

finally demanding payment.

We worked cheerfully, this stranger and I, 

casually swapping stories, 

fetching and carrying 

old boxes and plastic sacks full to bursting

with past lives, pointlessness and dust.   

It made a strange sight jumbled together,  

Grays and Moscow and Lincolnshire, 

these things the vapour trails 

of promises that broke and fled, escaping  

the inertia of busted love.  

Then quiet emptiness, bare walls and floors, 

the stranger gone with a handshake, 

paid to take these objects 

that we - young and vain - had bought, leaving me to 

memories of love and sunshine.

Note: I decided to have a clear-out. To get rid of a lot of stuff. It was a strange experience, paying someone to take away what had once meant so much, what had been a part of the fabric of different parts of my life. I ordered a six-yarder. And filled it.

Probably best read after Remnants Of A Life - this was a transformative moment in the slight and ordinary way that most of us experience such things.