Preserves

The fairground mirror of the past distorts
all your dearest memories, sucks them
into a vortex then stores them in a variety
of jars, unlabelled. Some are large, lidded.
These contain, perhaps, the whole sequence
of your first love affair, from blind date
to blind fury. The coiled trajectory of
your career. Others sit in a group, all

the same size: the unremembered days,
uniform in their seamless, quiet passing.
There are flasks of fluids: your tears shed
unheeded as a child. Champagne from
a wedding. Several kinds of blood. Then
these, tiny, perfect: the jewelled moments.
A May morning. A fragment of Alice Coltrane.
A small hand in yours. The smell of the sea.