Collector

You’ve started giving things away. 
My basement already crowded
with over a thousand slides of childhood
a projector with a burnt out light bulb
an assortment of hand-crafted Polish tapestries.

We look at your collection of sixty or more binders
comprised of well-preserved documents
each one encased in a plastic sheet.
You explain letters and government papers
that detail time spent in concentration camps
your wedding to Mother
Germany after the war
voyage to Canada on the General J.H. McRae.
You show me certificates and diplomas
from your working days at Northern Electric.
   I’ll bring most of these binders to the nursing home, you tell me.

We listen to your seven antique clocks chime.
Some hang on walls or sit on the mantle; 
you show me how to wind them.
   I’ll need a few of my clocks.
   
You linger over each piece 
of hand-painted china 
stamped RS, Silesia, or Prussia.
Candy, butter dishes, tea cups, saucers 
and pitchers on show in your rosewood buffet.
   I want some of my porcelain too.

You describe a precision instrument
from lab work at Nortel– 
a complicated looking device 
that measures the width
of a strand of hair.
   Do you want it, you ask?

 No, but I’ll take some clocks, Mother’s paintings, a few photo albums. 

Every piece tells a story, you say.

So I listen.

© Doris Fiszer