Ephemera Poem by Ian Nicholas McDowell

Ephemera is what we are,
from our tea chest high arrival
over the stumbling streets
to our slow blanching in this sunlit window.

Flies try our surfaces with their sticky feet,
dust quilts our blind eyes
until the shopkeeper's feather flick
opens them again
to the equable shouldering of our fellows.

Why don't they pick us out,
those who maunder past,
or even stop, grow bug-eyed,
butt their hands against the glass
leaving moon marks?

We are shinier, or rarer,
less breakable, more limited
as an edition; with some trick
or shape, or colour;
memories of childhood visits,
toffees rolled in the mouth,
an old back kitchen kettle singing.

No, the hours go.
Trees in Lincoln's Inn Fields dress
and undress, fog chokes
and unchokes bridges,
ships whisper rust,

and here I stand
in this September evening,
an old curiosity in the making,
peering through this shop mesh
to where these bibelots
who have outlived their lovers
wait, and wait.