OLD COATS

Old Coats

Old coats I used to wear,

Of different climes,

Of different times,

Some hardly used and

Some threadbare,

They hang around and stare at me,

From the wardrobe's Narnian door.

Each one a pocket memory,

Of a time and a person I used to be,

A musty moth-ball guards this place,

A sedentary sentry of a score of years,

Eyes me fearfully with mistrust and tears,

As I tell him how,

His war was over long ago,

His vanquished foe,

Now a fluttering of nothing.

Old tissues that fought the sniffles,

Through winter's monochrome months,

Hibernate in the deep -woollen dotage of,

A duffle coat duvet,

Spent ink cartridges,

Straddle cheap playing-away day,

Train tickets, while

Loyalty-cards scream of infidelity.

An orphaned button dreams one day of,

Returning to her family,

A compass awaiting re-discovery,

Points to where in a crumpled layer,

Twisted toffee wrappers, crinkled and crushed,

Their contents long discandied.

Choke upon layers of tweed and dust.

Summer stubs from seasons in the sun,

Of Pimms in the pavilion and Panama hats,

Who lost or won and innings scores,

And many other Wisden  facts,

Recede into the recess of a blazer,

And League match ticket books,

Tick off the score-card  of my life,
Triumph, failure, 

And mosaic faces in the crowd,

I never met yet shared such times.

Fragile cotton fibres,

Frame a faded picture of,

Two lovers in a photo booth,

Thrown together in a fumble of youth,

Forever in an amber-warm embrace,

His face could almost pass for me,

At twenty three,

Beneath,  

A lower tier of

Cinema receipts,

One unspliced spool of long  forgotten films retreats,

Across the inner eye,

A flicker of silver memory,

Surfaces for one moment to stare,

Then nosedives like some Titanic on her maiden thought,

Under a sea of the mind's  debris.

Lipstick painted phone numbers,

Index cigarette packet lives,

The spoils of victories of the night,

On first name only terms,

And calls that never were returned,

A sliver of some cardboard hope,

That never saw the sight of day,

Interred within a  side pocket,

Where they forever firmly stay,

Rest in pieces till the judgement day.

Post it notes in an interview jacket,

Preen with pride beside my first wage packet,

Past-it paper-clips  a half-pence piece,

An Ever Ready battery that one day

ceased.

Chewing gum wrappers ,

A winder for a watch,

A melted rubber band,

An empty roll of Scotch

Tape me to a past life,

 I thought I'd left for good,

Of doors that should stay firmly closed ,

Supposed they'd stay that way and would,

Now creak stiffly on their hinges,

Open wide to let me pass

Down corridors like warrens to

The wastelands of the past.

A single stamp for a letter never sent,

Scraps of throwaway thoughts ,

Some of them well meant,

Pleas to reconsider on

Crushed blue lines .

The jangle of a mystery key,

Unlocks another memory,

Of a life once shared  with a  secret she,

Of whom my parents would never approve,

Their attitude still painful to me now as then,

Invoked like a shaman's curse,

Still rattles my mind.

When fishing in the pockets of old coats,

Be careful of what you may find,

Be heedful of their hidden depths,

And the sharks-teeth thoughts you may provoke,

Be mindful of that old mistake,

That feelings mend and heal with time,

The languid lake can often be,

A drowning tempest,

Out at sea.

© Stephen Evans