Dead People’s Possessions

Simon Walsh

I’ve lived long enough to get the point and
pointlessness of dead people’s possessions,
padded softly through the rooms not knowing how to react ,
fed the ruffled cats with their disrupted routines,
traced the severed trajectories of calendars
and seen the eternally unfinished biographies on bedside tables;
I’ve heard the phones that innocently continue to ring,
ran my hands over the orphaned belongings
and felt the essence of humanity in what they are not ;
and I have recognized in the bow of  breadboard,
warp of  soap, creased in-sole of shoe
the outline of a life
but not the substance.

But most of all, it’s the quirks I like the best –
the old underwear dishcloth, the rabbit gun in the closet,
the poem written to the Queen Mother
on the occasion of her 100th birthday;
it’s because they all help to deepen the sense
that none of this adds up
without the hand of the designer
in this closed world of things.