Cuff links

We'd packed up all that had been
in his bedside table,
not taking the time,
tossing in photos and letters
and maps of Rome and Africa,
a pair of opera glasses he'd had
since The War,
cassette tapes of Rossini
and Scarlatti
and a small leather box
filled with tie tacks
and cuff links.

Today all this time later
I opened the box.
So intimate a collection
of pins,
thinking how each day he would open
this box
and choose.

I know no men now
who wear cuff links
or tie tacks
or pins
showing
their clubs and allegiances
as my father did.

I learned how to enamel at camp one summer
and made him cuff links
both brown and triangular,
one with a hole drilled into a corner,
both ugly.
He wore them until
thankfully one came unglued
from its cufflinking mechanism
and was never fixed.
But he saved them here
along with a tie tack I'd made
when I learned how to do silver at school one year.
A silver thread snaked
onto a silver base
with edges I filed into as much of an oval
as I could
until it got smooth,
and I decided it was ovular enough.

When no new idea came
for father's day
we bought cuff links
and tie tacks
from the mall.
He opted for Rotary cuff links
and American College of Dentists tie tacks,
but he saved our gifts.

There is a piece of shrapnel in the box
he kept
from Italy
when he was wounded.

There is a heart
my mother made for him
and he moved it from one jacket
to the next,
wearing it always.

There are small keys
and little screws
left from some project.

My father's last calendar
turned
from being the place where he wrote appointments to come,
to being the place where he recorded what he had done that day,
adding small details
in case he was asked.
He was no longer able to remember.

On the day of my parents' final anniversary
he wrote
Beautiful day,
really dressed up,
cuff links et al.

So much of what shaped him,
his days and meetings,
his hobbies and committees,
holidays and warfare,
is in there
untouched
since he left,
and now I can't let the box go.