This poem was published in Dreich, December 2022.

Nostalgia is the safest room
concert piano to aggrandise meagre talent
wall hangings once used in ‘charity’ lessons
artefacts to stimulate Socratic questions
now soothe and soften, a brilliant career, no questions asked.
No glass except for windows to garden.
Nothing reflected,
the eye can only fall on what is treasured
children’s terracotta pots, wooden model
of a mammoth, proud mounted newspaper reports.
The artefacts themselves are like glass,
darting prisms of awards and prizes.
The only photos are of those currently known,
those missing not displayed, lest grief should bloom.