Dream never forgotten,
even in adulthood, 
me aged 6,
in clouds with  
telephone to ring 
Grandmother in Heaven.
Conduit  to otherworldly
out of sight 
people and things, 
triggered my fascination 
in memory objects. 
Collapsing and combusting
past and present,
these portals help
connect us with 
the now gone. 

Compulsion to box
everything up when 
Mum passed away.
All I could 
think about, at
that time, were
lever arch files.
Eleven red boxes
to be precise,
to box up 
years worth of 
ephemera and brochures
from travels abroad. 

Despite compulsion to  
box everything up, 
memories in my 
museum of display,
method of loci, 
my memory palace,
hidden from sight 
dormant in boxes
prompted sea change
in archive fever.

Compulsion to make
dead on-display objects
fully functional again.
Reanimate the archive.
Use that mug, 
drink from cup.
Anti souvenir sitting
just gathering dust.
Make memory objects
come alive again.
Ventriloquist objects surviving
fine without operator.
If what they 
stand for is 
so precious, that 
memory will live 
on in our 
minds when these
objects pass away.