... (2019 - toss up)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrVOcehCyCw&list=RDZrVOcehCyCw&start_radio=1

From within a box of broken things,

A box of rusted can openers and shattered glass,

Of loose nails, blunted coins, stained cards and happenings past,

There is an echo that illuminates -

A gentle glow of 'what we know',

A 'what once we were' and 

'Where we've settled now'.

It is a dusty ring from a box of broken things,

Broken fables, broken purpose

And the aroma of peat and petrichor

Drifting from the skeleton of rotten leaves 

Snapped twigs and faded cursive.

Some might say,

It is the box that holds the magic.

That from within warped fiberboard,

Oxidized hinges and forgotten fabric,

Are housed the untold tales 

And the palpable incandescent static.

But I believe in the broken things;

In the powerful memories that their touch reels in,

In the olfactory enchantment of the déjà vu,

Of 'that which might' has of 'not just yet'

And of the sweeping whisper that secrets through.

It is the broken things 

That inspire such things,

The broken stories that are worth remembering.

And it is the box's lid that tends to keep us 

From the old world radiance of their retelling.

  

Author's Note

Revisiting an old favorite of mine.