The Hidden Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The Hidden

In an old cigar box I have old black & white photos,
nearing Christmas I sometimes take them out- one
can say I give them an airing and let them see my
decorated tree; mind it is artificial, but I do not think
they notice. Most of the photos depict festive times
summer by the sea, Easter skiing in the mountain and
christmas dinner. Now as I´m older than any of them
they look so young. But there is one missing…me…
I was always somewhere else; in the Caribbean or on
the Pacific Ocean on the way to Japan, scrap iron in hull
of an old cargo ship, it makes me sweetly melancholic.
Because I know behind smiles there was despair, and
when booze were drunk old feuds would surface and
there would be ill tempered arguments often ending
in fist fight; I see my mother wears a worried smile
I loved them all, put the photos back in the cigar box
till next end of year… perhaps?