Baggage

Sealed in their heavy luggage in the hold
they’d brought the encapsulated highlights
of their shed lives: Eva’s sewing machine
and her Watteau Doulton dinner service;
Sam’s tools, of course; the tea urn his father
had made using his skills as a tinsmith,
learnt in the packing-case trade, some books; the
postcard album bulging with eight or nine
years of miniature correspondence;
and the oval portrait, painted in her
sixties, of Sam’s apple-cheeked grandmother
Mary Adcock, née Pell (or perhaps Peel),
in her plaid shawl, who came out of nowhere.