Souvenirs

Objects of Memory

1 min read
A small meditation bell, two ceramic bulls, an oblong stone, and a ceramic pot rest on top of a bookshelf.
Photo: Robert Savino Oventile
An elderly man in a t-shirt and baseball cap.
Jim Hendrick. Photo: Jim Hendrick

If you do enough living, you tend to gather objects, small monuments to significant moments of your life. Call these objects souvenirs.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, English borrows the word souvenir from French. The word can refer both to remembering, the act of memory, and to a memento, an object that holds a memory. 

Memories and mementos can be lost. In his poem “Souvenirs,” Jim Hendrick meditates on such loss in the wake of the Eaton Fire.


Souvenirs

So many things were 
Lost in the fire.
Photographs, matchbooks, buttons,
Mardi Gras beads I’ve tried many times
To throw away.
Pens, shells, and menus,
Hair pins and posters.
Just the debris of life, chock full of memories.
Hotel towels, your father’s ball cap (“No Fat Chicks”),
Magazines, ashtrays, foreign coins, and CDs.
They’re all there, and much more,
Forgotten, half remembered,
Now ashes,
Life, the collection
Of souvenirs
Passing through my fingers
Like snow turning to water.

— Jim Hendrick

Jim Hendrick is a 75-year-old resident of Pasadena. He is a poet and abstract painter. He is deeply involved with Pasadena Village, a vibrant organization of seniors whose mission is to foster independent living in a spirit of mutual support, enrichment, and inclusiveness.

Local News Pasadena (LNP) publishes poems grounded in current news events from the greater Pasadena, California area. Submit your own poetry here.

The short URL of this article is: https://localnewspasadena.com/sgsy

Robert Savino Oventile

Robert is Local News Pasadena's Poet Laureate. He is a native of Pasadena and hikes Eaton Canyon regularly. His poetry has appeared in The New Delta Review, Upstairs at Duroc, The Denver Quarterly, ballast, and MyEatonCanyon.com, among other journals and venues. He is coauthor with Sandy Florian of Sophia Lethe Talks Doxodox Down (Atmosphere, 2021). He has kept the same haircut since 1983.
Email: [email protected]

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