Still-Shot Souvenirs : A Poem

You handed them to me in an envelope,
Which I opened under the soft glow of a hotel lamp,
And once home tacked them on cork above the bed;
Still-shot souvenirs of a time growing distant.

Two years have passed and they’re peeling now,
Like cherry blossom peeling into contrailed skies,
Above the park where daisy-chain rings
Passed palms and picnics.

Or as waves peeled gently over towel-strewn rocks,
And onwards to the ocean staining dark
Under time-wrinkled cliffs.

They’re starting to struggle loose,
Just as the tape slackened on the bike
Whose sinking seat traipsed plashes and underpasses,
Past taciturn binmen whirring in sun-shattered twilight.

Or like tattered flags threatening freedom
On fire-worn summits and gate-tower crenulations,
Wrestling in sky-bound currents that chill you to the bone.

I think, perhaps, they’ve curled in the damp;
That same damp that soaked soles warming by balcony doors,
And formed glazy pools beneath fountain icicles
Glaring softly in…