Time Capsule.

The last present you gave me was a cactus.

Well, that is what it was all about then,
not the long drawn out kisses on Hampstead Heath,
the rain falling.

          On the other hand, the forty something years
between the first kiss and the last
have been full of incident,
strange events not looked for in the Almanac
that only listed births and marriages.
Death is something missing from published horoscopes.

My home was like the Zoo, you often said;
in fact you took a shine to my one eyed woolen bunny
and my pre war tin giraffe.
Four generations of independent cats
lodged at 115,
furring up the kitchen,
lugging dead birds home to lay upon the door mat,
pummelling flies.
They have shuffled off their coils since our first night enchantment,
our first stroll in the park,
our first snog in the dark,
when we believed that we would live forever,
and a single kiss could speed us to the moon.

Well we were children then - well - more or less,
too young to vote, yet old enough to marry,
your first born nipper soon to kick your belly;
not our love`s child, but a gift from St. Tropez
one drug skewed summers day
in the arms of a counterfeit Count, or some other Hippy lover.
Our dreams became burnt cinders after that,
but I still kept your slipper safe at home
to place upon your foot if you should come to stay.

And call you did, two weeks before you died,
to present me with this cactus I now care for
upon the doorstep    where the cats had slept
before they soft shoed out on one last sad foray.

But I have not quite finished setting the world to rights,
this cactus was not the only gift you proffered,
there were also those two pots of Dorset honey
and that long sad wistful         unexpected kiss.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 21st. - 22nd. - 25th. - November 16th. - 24th. 2016.