Conjuring the Past

It’s a strange old pastime

This hobby of yours.

Searching in charity and pawn shops

for old film canisters.

Rooting through the bric a brac

in the hope of finding cylindrical treasure.

There can’t be many of them left now,

in these digital days of smartphones.

But still you find the odd one or two

among the bric a brac and oddments.

You hurry to pay and slip them in your pocket,

excitement building as you take them home.

You rush to your spare room,
turn out the lights and prepare the chemicals.

The magic solution that will enable

you to bring the past alive,

as you watch strangers gradually appear

on the paper floating in the liquid.

The faces of people you will never know,

some of them long since gone.

Caught in a moment of time and space

by an unseen and unknown hand.

Imagining their stories and lives,

who they were and who they loved.

The temptation to find out more

is overpowering at times.

But the search would be futile;

their histories arc lost to time.

Instead you add their images to the rest

keeping their memories alive in your own way.

Gareth is a forty-something teacher originally from Hereford but now living in Northumberland with his partner and two of his daughters. He writes poems, fiction and non-fiction about love, life and death - the usual stuff.