It was just an afternoon in a blur of afternoons
scattered in a line like a row of troll dolls.
Where is the screen porch where we played
when an hour was long and a year eternity?
Where are the mud pies we put in tins?
Where are those houses, those girls, that summer?
I found a box, and in that box, a vagabond hour returned.
On a steel rack at the foot of the basement stairs
was a parade of winter coats in plastic sheaths
crowned brightly by hat boxes across the top.
One yellow box had a silhouetted carriage on the lid
and we swooned at the idea of suitors arriving
as we stood tip-toe on a fold-out stool, snooping.
I found a box, and in that box, a vagabond hour returned.
Best friends, families, afternoons, troll dolls
all scatter, our solid center become fragile
bric-a-brac. Today a package came, and in it
a yellow hat box, and in the hat box, the scent
of my late aunt's house, my childhood, and an afternoon
in summer 1966, perfectly preserved and vivid.
I found a box, and in that box, a vagabond hour returned.
________
for Dverse MTB: Boxing Clever to The Bop.
One day I received a package containing a book (which I changed to a hat box in the poem). The book was inside a plastic sleeve, and when I took it out and opened it, I was instantly back in my aunt's house as a child. I think the book had been kept at some time on a shelf where someone had used the same furniture polish as my aunt used. In any event, I buried my smiling face in the pages and breathed in that long-forgotten scent. As for the troll dolls, mudpies, screen porches and coat rack with the yellow hat box on top, that was all stuff that I remember from childhood.
Image at top found on Pinterest.
Music: The Grateful Dead Box of Rain