Pop-Up Memories

The time had come to open that old box
Of paper clippings, pictures and old things
She had collected over years and years,
Though she knew from the start she never would
Arrange them in a scrapbook or review
And choose the ones worth keeping, then discard
At least a few – but no: there they were all,
In black and white and faded colours, too!

My mother’s life popped up in front of me
As if from a child’s book: the tall lighthouse,
Austerely looming under a white sky,
People in her street after the bombing,
Small scraps of tweed a young seamstress would keep,
Her parents’ smiles, her children’s birthday cards…
A collage – or a patchwork – of her days:
Her senile mind could not take these away.