The Box

Sunday morning writing with my friend. The prompt? A box. What's in it? My first thoughts follow.

Four sides and a sealed underseam

a lid that lifts free,

it is neither menace nor promise

more a probability

from afar and, without inspection,

an indecipherability.

To lift the lid is to

rearrange the atmosphere.

Expectation becomes awareness.

Had I filled the box

it would contain things that I love best:

children and grandchildren,

a white cottage with blue shutters,

my mother’s green teapot,

paper and pencils and paints,

countless books, a memory quilt,

embroidered with the names of those I love

 and under which I’d snuggle with a cup of tea.

There, in a corner, wrapped in bubbles,

would be dreams and whispered wishes,

that haven’t yet come true,

hugs, laughter, remembered smiles,

all in a tangle of joy.

And there? Under the brown paper

at the bottom would be

all my footsteps, all the places I’ve walked; 

There would be hordes of Ent-like trees

with huggable trunks and tell-secrets leaves;

bright, open fields filled with wildflowers

or corn, or hay in the making.

There would be only one city street

garish and thronging, making me wish for

dirt roads that meander, that wash out in 

heavy rains or become mud-bogged in spring,

hazy hot summer roads abuzz with 

insects, lined with chicory as blue as the sky.

I'd wander at will like a ghost 

through all the houses that held me,

stopping to listen to the mantel clock

at the old homestead, or to read stories 

to my own youngsters in our little Cape in 

Connecticut; to butter one of Tilda's

freshly baked hard rolls in the tiny

kitchen of the Long Island summer cottage,

or to watch a purple thunderhead build and explode

over my log cabin perched on a hill in Vermont.

I might haunt old jobs - tread again the swaying wooden floors 

of the old needlework factory in Tarriffville;

sniff the stale-coffee smell of the teacher's

lounge in Danville, pound up the clackety wooden

stairs of the newspaper office where I wrote

features and columns for fifteen years;

weave between the hush-carpeted cubicles 

where I stared at a computer screen all day,

or pace the long, tiled hallways of the grammar 

school where I once took high school classes.

The sheep meadows in England, the canal

boat in Holland, the rows of crosses in France,

every step I took abroad would be there in the box

waiting to be remembered.

I would not, however, leave hope in the box

as Pandora did. I’d tip it over

and shake until hope fell out, too

and with it in one hand

and my box in the other

I’d go on.

Photo from nocturny.deviantart.com