Drawers Without Homes

In the antique store there are drawers without homes,
their contents long removed, empty spaces,
containers will nowhere to hide
what was once so perfectly stored away,
neatly labeled, and, we once believed,
safe.

About this poem.

We often talk about hiding our dark things in closets. Me, I always mentally hid them in drawers. I have a weakness for things with lots of drawers. I think it comes from growing up in the age of card catalogs in libraries.

And about actual drawers. Poetry, after all, is rarely about one thing.

The picture is at one of my favorite little antique shops, Loot, in Turners Falls, Mass. They seem to specialize in things out of industrial places: Factories, labs and colleges.

Tom