There's little doubt that most enjoy accumulating things,
like dolls, or spoons, or painted landscape views.
We get enjoyment from their presence when we have them near,
although they're things that we may never use.
But though such baubles bring us joy, and knick-knacks are a treat,
the best of trinkets are not made from stuff;
at auction, they would nothing fetch, raise not a single bid,
their tiny housing's plenty room enough—
a maze of twisting passages joined by synaptic links,
this wunderkammer world that is our mind;
a curio collection formed of strange, nomadic thoughts,
which stand alone, and yet, are all entwined.
Like, "Why are things improbable occurring all the time?",
and, "Would it cause us grief to feed the poor?",
or "Can the smartest species really do such stupid things?",
"Was Orwell right with Nineteen-Eighty-Four?"
From time to time we take them down and dust them off with care,
and then back to the shelf they must return.
They may not matter very much to anybody else,
And yet, arranging them is how we learn.
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Author Notes
Today's word: wunderkammer (n.) a collection of oddities.
My much-treasured Christmas present for 2017 is a book by Paul Anthony Jones: "The cabinet of linguistic curiosities". Each page contains a descriptive story about some obscure or archaic word. It occurred to me it would be a fun exercise to try and write, each day, a poem featuring the "word of the day" from the book.
Thanks for reading.
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