Clearing Up

How do you unpick a life?

A Silver Spoon?

A Stanley Knife?

A riddle rewritten eighty times

A code of unsolved

Synaptic rhymes

Ten pairs of pants stuffed in a drawer

All large, all beige

And never worn

A hundred pairs of sports socks stabled 

In wicker baskets

Each one labelled

He never ran, or joined a gym

His trainers spotless

T-shirts, prim.

His knickknacks offer little more

A holy relic

A Galway shawl

Brollies, sunglasses, a myriad

Of structured chaos

In his pad

These random parts so plain to see

Are stinging Death’s

Sham victory?

But is he here, standing in the niche

Between the crisps

And mouldy quiche?

No, just me in speechless wonder

Of the discordance

Of this disordered order?

Death, the coward, is in another hole

Taking his confession

Unpacking his soul.