Vanity Will Dress When Other Clothes Fade Away Poem by Patti Masterman

You will live on forever in this old vanity set, they say;
For you will have filled it with so many hopes and dreams
Here before its mirrors, on this cheap rosette,
Though it a poor imitation, of something better.

And these soft-closing drawers would never hold-
But a spirit has such little volume anyway,
Its lifting can scarcely be measured any normal way.

The dreams were always real. Your spirit will find rest
Among these archaic odds and ends,
The remnants of a life once lived;
Old things have a hidden taproot to the past,
Unlike things not rooted nearly so deep.

Some things will endure until the atoms lose their grip
And wander away, to become other substances similar-
Or else give up, and go back then to dust,
Until found by another time and need.