Your Inheritance
So what of mine should I leave to you?
My clothes? They’re more utile than fashionable.
I could gift you my books but not
the willingness to read them.
And my music collection.
But it’s so 20th century.
To you, music’s not music
unless there’s an internet face to go with it.
Same with my films.
In your mind, black and white is a disease,
the 70’s are ancient history
and movies began with “Iron Man.”
At least, the car might give you
a couple of years of use.
Likewise, the house and furniture
though, when you marry,
your wife could be so aghast
at my interior decorating tastes,
she tosses every table and chair
in the dumpster.
There are the photographs of course.
Some drawer should provide a suitable haven
for where you got your looks,
the one thing of mine not so easily discarded.
The souvenirs you may as well bury with me:
the plastic Eiffel Tower, the Vatican City key-ring,
the Rocky Mountains snow-globe etc?
They’re everywhere I’ve been.
They’re not where you’re going.
- © John Grey 2023
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Washington Square Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.
No comments:
Post a Comment