The Apothecary,

and funnily enough, these drawers came from Careys Chemist, in Baltinglass.

Who decided to remodel their charming old style "drug-store" last year, and the builders just threw out these wonderful old drawers, which were hand-made, hand-painted, and had narry a screw to keep them together, into a skip in the snow.

So I magpied them. Not steal them, you understand...I magpied them. I dug them from the snow, cleaned them, dried them out, inhaled the generations old scent from the dessicated wood, polished the handles, fought the encroaching rot and mould, made plans for their eventual home, God and a good cabinet maker willing.

Not only do they hold memories of a time before my beginning, they are charged with more recent, potent, potions of memory, a witches brew of coldness and warmth, poverty and pain, love and loss.

I use them now as a ramshackle bookshelf, and a reminder.

It reminds me, as Utah Phillips said, that the past doesn't go anywhere.