thrown

histories of the living
on a pyre where
everything burns

too many
years of paper
fuel the flames

indecipherable notes
hoarded documentation
meaningless rites of passage

yellowing records
dry texts consigned
to the officialdom of fire

attic-gathered memories
all statutory periods expired
withered to the driest stick

twigs of truth dried out by time
kindling for a conflagration
of irrelevant things

© BH, 2022

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It comes round every year, sometimes several times in a year, but these days there is so much debris left from long ago. I was burning paper, papers, documents, from a working life now abandoned. Thinking to myself, as the flames leapt in the incinerator, how things of importance turn into ephemera. Up they went, smoke in the air. I am the better for it…