tickTock man

outside the holocaust museum, Washington, DC

Second drawer down on the right, in the wood top desk, which sat beneath the window of my childhood room, held the universe of lost & found things.

The post cards, of course, with pictures of places I’d never been well outside the boundaries of our neighborhood, addressed to someone else & held by an ever hardening red rubber band. Evidence of life in the great beyond.

Marbles. Unmatched queens and a five of clubs. Empty matchbooks with archaic numbers scribbled on their covers. Round bits of metal & springs, screws. Pieces of contoured glass. A uniform patch, that read Layman Brothers. String. A Mother board. Mess of wires.

Relics of a previous future, unmet, yet.

After a day exploring the woods as we played war or built outposts along the border, my brother, cousins and I emptied our pockets in the center of the floor. Loose dirt and rust spraying off our findings into the carpet. We'd run fingers along grooves, pitted surfaces and hard places---a puzzle in how they all fit.

‘Do we know what it is yet?’ my cousin would ask, always the first & last question.

‘No, there is more,’ was ever the answer.

We’d sit, rolling them in our palms and tell the story, each day adding details. A washer from an elbow or shoulder joint. A receipt carried the activation code for something called Marlb. An action, or maybe the name of what we were re-constructing.

When called to supper we would slip them in the drawer, with a clink, clank, ring-a-ling. The drawer became heavy in its track, hard to slide out and release its contents.

At night, after everyone left I would take everything out and assemble it in the obvious patterns. Arms. Legs. An eye. The inner workings of the body. Then I lay within, cuddled in a ball, my ear pressed to the heart---an old railman’s pocketwatch, which belonged to my grandfather--- and wait for it to whisper, once more.

tick.

written for Poetry Jam & Theme Thursday