A BRASS JAR POLISHED

A temporal silence pervades
there, where once we dwelt together.
It was a place made of odd stuff of dreams, old collectibles,
drawn from across the world.
A brass jar once polished to a glaze of gold,
 crystals wrought to healing shapes,
paint brushes stacked in old coffee mugs,
books which opened into words of an alien kind...

A writing desk, a jar filled with water,
 holding a single leaf on a single stem,
some book opened randomly, left half-read,
with a bookmark that has flown away.
There is a coffeemaker, long unused.
And those books which overflowed the shelves,
they did not invade the rooms in such overwhelming numbers before;
not before I began to earn and my pockets felt the warmth of money!

Those were the times when there was
 a lone bookstore around the corner,
and few visitors once in a while.
Books were the objects to be handled with a feel
for the aroma of adhesive and the brand new ink.
On the wall was hung a clumsily made portrait I drew
of a poet with dreamy eyes and a flowing white beard,
and in its glass frame could be seen
the reflection of every passerby who passed along the road.

And how could I forget the black kitten who stood guard every hour,
as that was the mission entrusted to her by her Animal God.
That was a world within a world,
a brass jar polished to a glaze of gold!