Keepsakes

image borrowed from bing

Keepsakes

“Poetry is a pack sack of invisible keepsakes.”

--Carl Sandburg.

Like a dog burying a hambone in the garden,

& then forgetting about it, as a species

we seem to all hoard, save, put aside

every sort of thing--somehow significant

for a moment, for a month--mementos,

souvenirs, impractical gifts, belly button lint,

string, shells, tin foil balls, crystals, driftwood.

Hanging on to the edge of a protruded brick

of our living room fireplace, on the left liberal

side, is my grandfather’s cane, made from

a shellacked bull’s penis, 3 feet in length;

opposite it on the right conservative side

hangs a plain wooden cane that my father-in-law

left behind during a visit fifteen years ago;

both passed on now, both remembered daily

by their dueling canes.

There is a hexagon candy jar

    full of small colored rocks

         that we kept bringing home

                after beach combing & hikes;

part

of a plan I once had

of polishing all

                   of them, and then

displaying them in a beautiful

hand-made wooden bowl

I would get somewhere--

                   but the jar is full,

sitting on a low shelf

in the basement,

alongside

              a clear plastic bag

                                     of perfect sand dollars

that nobody ever sees but me.

The crown jewel of nostalgia

is a small leather suitcase

that my grandfather gave me. 

It had once held his wonderful oil paints

& the brilliant smears of color all over it

make it look Pollock-dripped

or Matisse-dotted.

Inside it now are hundreds of letters.

For a busy decade during my twenties;

while in the Navy,

returning to college twice,

starting my career as an Actor,

then abandoning it for one as a teacher,

he and I

kept up a continuous stream of correspondence.

I kept all of his letters;

he was a wonderful writer,

having the knack

            of seeming just conversational.

Just before

                    he died,

                                  he told me

that he had kept all my letters too,

& that it might be a fun project

to combine them & correlate them.

After he passed away

leaving

a void none of us has ever recovered from,

I organized them,

his letter,

my response--

my letter,

his response;

the perfect memory box.

Years ago,

when I first started blogging,

I thought they were worth sharing,

so I typed up

       a couple of dozen

                of them, until

one day when the absurdity nymphs

stopped by & reminded me

that the world at large didn’t really care

about them as I did,

and besides,

it wasn’t any of their damn business, so

I closed the lid

on the treasured painter’s box,

folding the letters twenty score,

placing it on a high shelf

in the busy furnace room

          at head-height, so that

                      every time I pass by it

                               picking up toilet tissue,

paper towels, 

          feminine products, 

                         or Kleenix, 

we can exchange pleasantries

& knowing glances.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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