FLOTSAM
-----------floating wreckage
-----------drifting persons or things
Everyone has flotsam in his life
A forgotten misdeed
Discarded memories of a broken promise.
Stolen moments of joy
Delicious thrills you thought would last a lifetime.
All private niches of your very own.
Flotsam visions
Forcing entry into your mind
Thoughts that flash in moments of stillness
Hugging your innermost soul
Sending warm feelings…a motley of emotions -
All things which ran a gamut in your life.
Driftwood bits and pieces
Of flotsam reminders of the past
Of secret and forbidden places -
Of favorite haunts and quiet sanctuaries;
Emotional scars that would not heal
And stoking a bruised ego .
Strains of a melancholy song -
Attempts at laughter while your heart grieved.
Holding back the tears that begged to fall.
Will these ever go away?
(But you don’t want them ever to go away!)
There’s a time for remembering –
A season for forgetting.
In solitude and in your old age
Would you choose to knit your life away?
Or would you rather keep these flotsams
To open at will
Marvel that you have survived them all.
There are lessons to be learned here.
If you empty your heart
to pour it all into one person -
Or give your trust freely
Often in one careless instant
You are robbed of yourself.
And left with nothing at all.
In the end
You will have these flotsam odds and ends.
To store in a Pandora’s box of your own.
-----------------------© Jotte:March 10, 1999
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POETRY