Valentine’s Mixtape

The Valentine’s Day mix tape that you made for me,
complete with smiling photo attached,
‘Greetings from your sponsor’,
your Jim Morrisson eyes and cheekbones,
your thick tawny hair,
all benign and gentle
(God you were beautiful),
resurfaced today.

Photo-less now,
unearthed from the wooden chest where all artefacts
of an analogue age have gone to memory,
corroded screws and over-stretched tape,
hidden beneath the letters,
photos from Boots,
the brochures, flyers and tickets from many holidays,
the newsletters and ‘zines.

Its ability to play for me long gone,
become silent and remote, like you,
as time ticked and tape gave way to CD,
and CD to Blu-ray
and Blu-ray to Spotify,
instant access a cypher for memory,
a momentary gratification,
and your kind disappeared.

I remember you listening to albums
over and over, end to end,

a mad curator of the human condition,
the pain and gravel of Tom Waits’ ‘Lonely’,
the ethereal strangeness of Sandy Denny’s ‘Late November’,
the aching punk pathos of Nikki Sudden’s ‘Chelsea Embankment’,
each song a paean, a sign, a message received,
the ultimate mix tape an act of love.