Mementos

I've rifled through all of it -
I promise you, time and again.
Packages placed all precariously up,
Lying this way and that way in
*Every* corner of my den.
I found those old Paris playing cards,
The ones missing all the twos.
And your encyclopedias, wrapped in Burnt Sienna,
Each of them half dust and half paper.
I've read lots of old books,
Removed still pots from their nooks -
Saved this and that odd thing for later.
I've been through everything now,
Yet in none can I find it -
In little boxes, bigger boxes,
Bitter brown old digging boxes,
They may as well be empty boxes
All scattered on the floor.
The walnut floor, so softly orange lit,
Feels like a stone beneath me.
It is now that I realize that I've been
*Sitting* here, for hours, with tears in my eyes,
And for what?
A tiny trinket of you among all of the rest?
Because I have been blessed with so many!
Every memory, mountain and meadow,
And watching three beautiful lives grow -
These boxes are filled with little but those!
And yet,
Since That Day,
Since the last time I lived,
I can't bear to look at these smiles.
They were happy, oh these unknowing pictures,
And I cannot part with a single one.
These capsules - of miles we traveled
And mysteries unraveled,
Are too precious for me to ever let go.
To lose but one is to burn them all -
And where did that *damn* thing fall?
Into tears behind my beaten bedpost
To be forever lost to this world?