The Daily Poet – Poem 10 – July 24, 2011

Another day has come along while another night has passed and gone.

It’s time for another edition of The Daily Poet for sporadic poetry addicts.

Today’s poem is dedicated to an old friend of mine, Scott DenDooven, who sadly is now among the unspoken.

We grew up together in Southeastern Wisconsin until he moved away in Middle School.

I had always thought about him over the years and wondered where he had gone in life.

One day, I decided to start looking for him, and as sometimes happens when we seek things in life, I realized that I would never find what I was looking for.

Scott had passed away several years before I had started looking.

This poem is dedicated to Scott who will forever be given a voice through the hearts of the people who loved him.

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Time Capsule

We created a time capsule in your parent’s basement
with all of the memories that matter to preteen boys,
a BB gun, a couple of old Playboy magazines, and a box
of castoffs we found along the tracks behind your house.

We pushed up one of the corner ceiling panels
and shoved it all back past the ends of our fingertips,
then we pledged to forget about its existence
and a few months later your family moved away.

It’s been over twenty years since that day
when we pushed our childhoods out of reach.
I just found out you passed four years before,
but I lost touch with you too long ago.

For years I’ve thought we’d go back together
maybe during an open house or to ask the current owners
to let us unbury the treasures we once savored
and revisit the past we put away when we were young.

But now I realize I would have to go alone
and who knows if it was discovered already
by young friends searching for something of their own
their fingers just long enough to find the life we left behind.

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Thank you forever for reading and keeping the voices I hear alive.