Jumble - Richard Fleming

At jumble sales and stalls of bric-a-brac,
these old things gather like tide wrack
washed up out of a sea of years:

the shoehorn with the fox-head handle; the candlestick without a candle;
the photograph of Brighton Pier; those carved monkeys that can see or say or hear
no evil thing; the ugly vase Aunt Lizzie sent us from Peking
before the war; the Coronation Mugs and hairbrush sets and bagatelle,
where winner gets the highest score.

Like postcards, from a place called childhood,
that went astray in some post office pigeon-hole or tray,
they are delivered now, belatedly.

We turn them over in our ageing hands,
examining their surfaces, weaving strands of antiquity
into some flawed pattern that we call the past.

Richard Fleming
This poem appears in Richard’s second poetry collection, Strange Journey.

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