A Lunch Box of Memories



Let us honor the insignificant
unholy sacraments
in the seasons of the ordinary
,
because they slow us down
in a world that moves too fast
for us to notice anything.
I miss my Davy Crockett lunch box,
its
dark sepulchral wombs of food,
bologna and cheese sandwiches on
Bond Bread
with Tastykake
Chocolate Juniors.

Forget the carrot slices, mom.
I suffer unutterable longing
for my Donald Duck Pez Dispenser.
My health is fine, so are my teeth,
despite all the Fizzies and Flavor Straws
for which I feel a nimbus of
impenetrable nostalgia,

cloud-like mysteries of devotion
to ancestral comic books,
'Sylvester and Tweety Bird' or

'Tales from the Crypt.'
My favorite Saturday morning shows
are still 'Ramar of the Jungle' and 'Sky King,'
my heart yet haunted by the valiant German
Shepherd, Rin Tin Tin,
especially the episode
when he and Rusty got lost
on the prairie
and saved from a stampede 

by White Buffalo Woman.

All gone now, along with the smell
of the typewriter, the tick of mahogany
clocks, the shine of new Buster Brown Shoes,
and the shadowy stains on my tongue
after chewing
Beeman's Black Jack gum.
No one preached to me then about gluten,
not even my family minister.
There was less outrage, more fun.
Now, where condominiums hustle
their boxed glass dreams, there once was
a wheat field in summer wind
where you and your father could run half
naked, sun shouldered, sweaty and loud
through rippling
golden waves
of timelessness.

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