Omnianaphiles

We are not
hoarders.
We simply have
collections of collections
scattered throughout
the house, the basement, the garage, the yard.

Most basic, most me,
are the books.
Every room
(bathrooms too!)
has at least one bookshelf.
Not unusual for there to be more.
One room has five, another, four.
Numerous shelves reserved for a complete (to date)
collections of Clive Cussler, Nora Roberts, JD Robb,
Bertrice Small, Michener, Dan Brown, Craig Johnson,
Mara McBain, Anneliese Brand,
L'Engle, McCaffrey, Nin and and and.
Many to the X^th degree more.
Back in time, other shelves reserved
for books before copyrights existed.
More for signed first editions.
Children's books long out of print
for grands and great grands.
Shakespeare, Dickens, Alcott, Hugo.
Still other bookcases contain
(if poetry EVER may be 'contained')
Scott, Whitman, Tennyson, Byron, Milne,
Frost, Frost and still more, Frost.
I've been to libraries
with fewer books.

Then
there are the trunks.
Hump-backed and squared tops,
brass-bound and leather strapped.
My grandmother's grandfather's trunk
from the early eighteen hundreds
and the one with the wedding gown from 1918.
Another is packed with (now) nameless faces
rendered in black and white or daguerreotype.
Great-great aunts and cousins thrice removed--
families with twelve and thirteen children
who parents gathered on holidays
and those parents were each one of many, many children.
Large families being the norm to help out on all
the family farms stretching back to the mid-1800s.
Another is carefully packed
with hand-made quilts-- each folded with fragile tissue paper.
Wedding band quilts and other patterns with marvelous names
like 'Over the Moon' and 'Flower Gardens' and "Fairy Betweens'
all crafted from remnants of worn out clothes
passed down and around between fifty-some-odd children
before being incorporated in the quilt
for Sara May (on the occasion of her wedding)
or Theresa Sue (on the occasion of her firstborn son.)
Each safety-pinned with the who and the why and a date.
Christmas ornaments from Germany are nestled in shredded newsprint
in yet another trunk. Still another is papered with labels
from Paris, London, NYC, Venice, Rome, New Dehli and Hong Kong
--steamer trunk travelogue
of my grandmother's travels 'round the globe
as a nanny back in the day.
Wicker trunks serve as end and coffee tables.
Large wooden trunks - hope chests - are filled with
my husband's hopes to get organized.

Perhaps no one gives a hoot
but then there are the owls.
They fly beneath circling fans or rest in tree branches.
They hang in front of windows, rest on bookshelves,
balance on whatnots and peer down from cornices.
Last accounting was 162.
But that was years ago.

Dragons fight for space on shelves
with owls. They agree to share--
most of the time.
Pewter dragons reign over my desk
perched upon emerald crystals or glowing orbs.
Some peer from between books and one,
six-foot-long
curls around my monitor.

Cat's Meow houses line wainscotting in the dining room
and the window sills and framework above doorways.
Many of places we've traveled to or are, simply,
fun. Each with its sleeping, stretching, dangling-pawed cat.

Redwings, Tigers, and Lions take up an entire forty-foot
wall in the Man Cave - framed with signed hockey sticks and game balls.
Gordie Howe peers out, looking upon Cabrera in companionship--
all in excellent company. Multiple bar mirrors reflect
collections upon collections
as space is also shared by hundreds of Labatt Blue, hunting
and Americana beer mugs. Beer taps. Hockey pucks.
Hunting patches and bulls-eyed targets.

The living room is a shrine to the USS Constitution
with model ships and photographs, collectors plates
and paintings. A piece of her deck from a 1939 rehab,
stamps and postcards. Anything USS Constitution.
Everything 'Old Ironsides.'

The far wall of the garage
is a solid space comprised of drawers.
One-hundred-and-forty-four
to be exact.
Twenty-some-odd versions of nails rest inside
twenty-some-odd drawers. Lord only knows
how many different types of screws
reside in others. New. Used. Shiney.
Rusted. 'You never know when
you might need them!'
Bolts and washers.
Nuts.
Oh and golf balls because
hundreds are never enough! Gidgets
and gadgets, thing-a-ma-gummies and
whatsits, what-cha-ma-call-its and thing-a-ma-bobs.
Umteen types of wrenches.
Three each of four different hammers. Axes, Hatchets,
threshers, awls, and, Oh Lord,
don't let me get going on the wires, extension cords, and connectors!

The back house has a wood collection.
Logs. Planks, Branches, Sticks.
Not for the fireplace, mind you.
No. They are for ...
ah ... something?

We are Omnianaphils:
collectors of collections.
We also suffer from 'flatsurfaceitus'
but that's another story.
We weren't deprived children who never had anything.
We just like our stuff.
We use and look at it;
enjoy and revel in it.
We also need to spend lots of time
dusting it all.