Pottering They called it pottering,Or sometimesHis hobby. Or sometimes just plainDabbling. Something that whiled away his lonely hours, You know,Now that the wife had passed on. That’s what they said.Though no-one,NO-ONE,Could begin to understand his passion or his pain,As he sat with album and tweezersAnd the stories of a thousand livesSpread out before himIn inch by inch rectangles of perforated paper,Legends engraved in cancellation ink,The living DNA of lives gone by preservedLike flies in cloudy-clear amberOn yellowed gummed-backed strips,Albums caressed by the hands of the long dead,Their copperplate script an elegyTo lost loves and broken hearts, Tiny haikus of love,Shards of pink envelopes marking the passing of years,Philatelist arias more poignant than any Puccini score And twice as as heartbreaking,All archived in the dusty albumsLovingly stored in the all-embracing library of his shedWhere you can always find himPottering. Manage Cookie Preferences