BEFORE - DAVID JACKSON

This is a poem about the early days of retirement. It's about the loss of identity that comes with no longer having a job title, with no longer having a role, maybe even no longer having a purpose or a use.

Clearing my desk out, I find a cache
Of old office diaries, dumped in a drawer
Cloth-covered chroniclers, telling the tale
Of the man that I was before

Randomly reading them, scanning the record
Of journeys, and meetings and calls to be made
Of all those things that so filled out each day,
For the man that I was before,

The long days in Dublin, Geneva and Riga
The party in Edinburgh, each Christmas time
That marked out the milestones, and set out the seasons,
For the man that I was before

Bundling the volumes, taking them out
To the recycling bin that stands by the gate
Ruefully, relinquishing the last traces of
That man that I was before