Where do you keep yours?
On the top shelf of a forgotten closet
Reached only by a rickety ladder,
Or the bottom drawer of your prized, antique bureau.

Are they haphazard in a torn paper bag,
Or deliciously secreted away in a casket encrusted
With precious jewels, bedazzled.

Not like any others, yours buried in the
Cradle of days before words were formed,
When sights held all the answers,
But evaporated with every cry for milk.

Born to the universal joke,
Each telling, asking, “Keep
Or discard?”
Will you
Guard it with your life
Or label of no value.

Yours and yours alone,
You fashion your hours
And endless years on these things.
Then
Foolishly
Tossing, by mistake, in haste,
Those most loved.

Second thinking,
Just in time
You salvage the best
Of the most
Glistening,
Carrying you through
Another day.

Charlene James Duguid
Amissville, Virginia