Poem for Everyone

I will present you

parts

of

my

self

slowly

if you are patient and tender.

I will open drawers

that mostly stay closed

and bring out places and people and things

sounds and smells,

loves and frustrations,

hopes and sadnesses,

bits and pieces of three decades of life

that have been grabbed off

in chunks

and found lying in my hands.
they have eaten
their way into my memory,

carved their way into

my heart.

altogether

- you or i will never see them -

they are me.

if you regard them lightly,

deny that they are important

or worse, judge them

i will quietly, slowly,

begin to wrap them up,

in small pieces of velvet,

like worn silver and gold jewelry,

tuck them away

in a small wooden chest of drawers

and close.

- John T. Wood, 1974