Ash.

Ash

   Twenty-some years after we abandoned England

   I'm clearing out a cupboard and stub my thumb
   on a yellow, never-opened tin of Traditional Custard Powder,

   bought from a Waitrose for 42p, still explaining how
   to make a pint of custard in a "conventional cooker."

   I empty the ash, wash out the delicate scum
   and keep the tin, in case it deserves to hold more

   than a dry milk sauce. Its rusted script might grow
   stronger over time, confronting the microwaved future

   long after the food's expiry date, the way so many
   humble objects shape and shame our lives: a conch shell

   beachplucked on our honeymoon, a gift bag bearing
   red-nosed wishes from a half-remembered friend,

   a cotton mouse (it made a dead cat purr), a vinyl
   album whose acid-fed lyrics I knew by heart ...

   Throw away nothing and you throw it all away.
   Why am I so scared of loss? Everything on the shelf

   is rich in dust. Let go, I tell myself, let go.

Mark Abley is a poet, non-fiction writer, editor and journalist who grew up in Saskatchewan and now lives in Montreal. He recently finished the first draft of a book about language change and the future of languages, to be published internationally. At present he is savouring Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark.