Crouching in attic gloom,
where skylight beams illuminate their pool of silver dust,
old leather suitcases doze like alligators
dreaming their prehistoric dreams.
They sleep soundly having eaten up my father’s life ...
the photographs, the hearing aid and collar studs,
the safety razor with its rusted blade,
the letters and the wallet with the ticket stubs
... yet I am so afraid
that when I kneel beneath the skylight
to prise apart those sagging, alligator jaws,
the life that I will find compressed within
will be too small to match my memories of him.
Richard Fleming
This poem appears in Richard’s second poetry collection, Strange Journey.
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