Charting a Life Through a Cupboard

Charting someone's life through a cupboard
More plausible than would seem
Simple items become landmarks
Every speck of dust a day beyond
The progression of another hour
One more change adapted to
Surgical gloves to wheelchairs
Bandages to pain pills
Tools to pillows
A course all its own
A mountainous path
Smelling the sweet grasses
Stopping to taste the dew
Peaks there were
Littered with ditches
But peaks they were
Surmounted with a smile
A laugh
The coarsest gauze to hold the wound
And yet
Through the peaks came the troughs
The grass turned to sand
Dew to silt
You could smell it on the air
More gauze couldn't always keep it at bay
Slower day by day
Troughs are temporary
But there are darker valleys
From which even heroes don't return
Where the cupboard turns irrelevant
Held by a bed
Storage fades away
Life loses one of its dimensions
To small rooms
Dark and drugged away from despair
Just one final push
The valley may be progressively darker
And so the time for the lantern held is now
As brief as it may be
They lit the path
A last opportunity from us for to see
And near the bottom
Where there is no place for me
The final steps are always taken alone
But there will always be our sun for you
Take it with wherever you go
Don't care to be forgotten
Not with these cupboards full of things
They draw maps for memories
And for the past memory sings.