From Newsgroup: rec.arts.poems

MummyChunk wrote:

Will-Dockery wrote:

Stuart Leichter wrote:
Willie's Tchotchkehs

My mother tries to revisit the mementos and letters she has saved
it seems forever, so there is enough to fatigue even a woman half her age, >>> a hoard of four generations of three centuries now.
Photos, post cards, telegrams, videos--
her whole-some memory outered
through a vergeless looking-glass,
gleaming back lucid.
We are sorting and packing, keeping and discarding while she naps
after 89 years...
A book-size leatherette box in the 'den' means little to her still,
for it is, that is, was my father's,
which she keeps as a keepsake in the cabinet of 'his' furniture.
I had never seen it before,
but my mother is again moving after 30 years,
half of them widowed,
so I am helping and permitted to be nebby and to discover.
It has no treasure, the Quarter Eagle a charm on my sister's bracelet,
the Indian head 1909 penny somewhere else...
A slim gold chain not gold, a Ronson lighter,
half a dozen tiny padlocks and keys
you would find on luggage,
tie clips, cufflinks, studs, familiarish if not precious,
dozens of safety pins around a doubled triangle paper clip,
a miniature steel link chain,
burnished tags or bars, identiafiable only by him,
a locker room name plate of woodgrain cardboard engraved 'William Leichter',
and something else I'd never seen anywhere loose,
a gold tooth, by god.
Was it his? He had never smiled so much for me to notice.
It seemed skeletal, it bore a semblance to NA*I riches
or Tutenkhamen's youth,
that gold bicuspid tooth among his kept tchotchkehs
today, July 4, 2003.

S classic poem from former Usenet poetry newsgroup regular Stuart Leichter.

Thanks for sharing Will

It's a good one, a bit sad.

Look for Stuart's poem "Romance In Country" if you have the time, MummyChunk, or the poem about Janis Joplin, I forgot the title of it.

Thanks again.


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