Sorting through lives
Letters and photos
Trinkets and baubles
What once was important
Is no more
The poignant priorities
Tyrannies of the urgent
Become nothing but ashes
Ashes, ashes
We all fall down
While holding hands
Clinging, connecting
Laughing, crying
And supporting one another
The W3 prompt this week is write a quadrille—a 44-word poem with no required rhyme or meter — on “what remains.”
Poet of the week Sheila Bair has been caring for her mother with dementia, which is, indeed, the fading away of a person. I watched my own mother disappear that way.
This week my sister is helping me sort through the stuff that remains in the house. So many letters and papers and objects that hold memories are here. We hold them in our hands; we feel the moment for which they existed; then, it’s decision time. Save? Recycle? Gift to someone else that they, too, might hold it for a moment?
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 
We do all fall, this is lovely that support remains 💞
An arduous task.
Sally, your phrase “the poignant priorities / Tyrannies of the urgent” really struck me—those lines seem to crystallize the way once-pressing matters fade into irrelevance.
Also, I think the echo of the nursery rhyme in the second stanza adds such a layered tenderness to the memory-sifting…
~David
Sally I’ve been there and it is so very difficult. I think for each person there will be some things that resonate and others that don’t… It is so very subjective. It took a week with both of my sisters to be able to sort through everything. A year later we sorted the sorted . Now we each have those few items that are touchstones to memories that are precious!
To add to the poignancy of this moment in life- you relive a million memories as you touch the objects connected with your shared past. what a brilliant take.
Sally, I like how your structure effectively mirrors the transition from individual loss to shared experience ❤️
Not things, but people, connections. (K)
This is nice and simply done. I like it.
‘The tyrannies of the urgent’ – we’re often busy going nowhere.
I liked the incorporation of the nursery rhyme. It really adds to the poignancy of the moment and the letting go.
“Tyrannies of the urgentBecome nothing but ashes” —
It’s such a difficult task. Unusual, too, at times, what we hold onto as we age. You convey this experience powerfully.
hi, Sally 😍
Just wanna let you know that this week’s W3, hosted by the amazing Bob Lynn, is now live:
https://skepticskaddish.com/2025/06/25/w3-prompt-165-weave-written-weekly/
Enjoy❣️
Much love,
David