Box Set
 
When you watch an old TV episode from a box set
it is never quite the same as your memory.
It stands there on the screen as if asking
why you brought it back from its own time,
where it was comfortable. It misses its world –
the one that created it and its behaviour.
Now it’s alone without contemporaries and it shows.
True, the box is brightly coloured
but it’s like an old flag for different victories,
a standard no longer celebrated in the wind.
 
That feeling is missing because, unlike you,
it hasn’t been here, adapting to all the changes.
You are consuming now what you consumed then
but not even nostalgia’s seasoning can recapture
the taste of that time. It’s past its best,
acting like an exhumed body, carefully prepared
and beautifully dressed, but unsuited to now.
So you put it back into its box set where it belongs
rather like someone else will, one day, put you
into your own box set, where you will also belong.

Susan Wilson

 
If you have any thoughts on this poem, Susan Wilson would be pleased to hear them.